Fairy God Doctor
by G.E Waldo
Summary: Wilson and House attend a medical conference. One of them gets into some unexpected and serious trouble and the other must come to the rescue in an unexpected way. Pre-SLASH. SLASH. ADULT!
1. Chapter 1

Fairy God Doctor

By GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House attend a medical conference. One of them gets into some unexpected and serious trouble and the other must come to the rescue in an unexpected way.

Rating: ADULT. Pre-slash and SLASH. NC-17, M. Mature.

Pairing: House/Wilson

Discalimer: I don't own Gregory House, dang-nabit!

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"Why me?"

Cuddy stared at her dark haired Oncology Department head with eyes that brokered no argument. "Because you can tolerate him for four days."

Wilsons' eyes bugged from his head. _"No_ I can't. I may lov –" Wilson licked his lips and with a sigh started again. "House is my _friend_ but even I can only stretch that so far. One day with him leaves me -"

Cuddy was mercilessly curious. "Yes? Leaves you how?"

"Like a wrung out dish-rag ready for the scrap heap."

"I'll be sure to note that in the budget report. This is a medical conference on diagnostics. House has to go, it's in his contract but the only way he will go is if I make him go under threat of financial ruin or twenty-five hours of clinic per week until he turns sixty-five."

Wilson was curious now. "That's weak."

"And," Cuddy added, "ordering you to cut off his Vicodin."

Wilson pondered for a second. Unlike House, he _would_ do as Cuddy requested because, though he wisely kept his mouth shut about it, he and she had never slept together and she signed his paychecks. House blankly refused to acknowledge the power of her position. Hired by the one of the few women who had at one time or another, loved him. House was such a _lucky_ bastard. "Thanks. Please - make my life even more miserable than his. So he agreed to this multi-dimensional blackmail?"

"Yes."

Wilson frowned. "Really? Now I am worried."

"House wants to go. He just needed to get his daily fix of making me miserable. Now I pass that torch to you. Have a good time."

Wilson left Cuddys' office with a heavy step. Four days. It would be the longest time spent in Houses' company since Amber died. Wilson wondered if he had enough insurance.

-

-

-

Wilson had to give her credit, Cuddy had made the arrangements specific to Insane- House-management.

The room had no bar fridge for House to plunder and every expensive porn channel on the television had been locked out.

Wilson was also glad to see that, though Cuddy had thought of her expense account, she had also considered Houses' physical needs. The spacious washroom had bathtub bar assists and non-slip mats. The beds were both king-sized and pillow-topped for comfort. There were extra heated blankets in one dresser drawer and, on the large dresser, lay two pre-paid appointment coupons for a masseuse if Houses' leg got really bad.

For all her warbling over what a pain House was, Cuddy still tried to take care of him. _She reminds me so much of me_. Wilson looked around and took the bed farthest from the washroom.

House, if he noticed the gesture, didn't comment and dropped his suitcase on the floor. "Didn't you tip the bellhop?"

"Why?"

"He wouldn't carry my bag in."

"Maybe that's because you told him he looked like one of Santa's elves. And last I heard you had money."

"Sure but I forgot to bring it."

"Right." Wilson had suspected as much and had brought twice what he thought he would need plus another third.

House stood in the middle of the room, looking around with a frown on his face.

Wilson knew the answer but "What?"

House looked at him in horror. "No bar fridge?"

"No bar fridge. Cuddy's orders."

"Bad enough she sends me to a conference – to a conference with _you_ – and makes me share a room, she denies me alcohol too??"

"She doesn't want a call from the manager, the New York City Police Department, The New York Fire Department or the Governor. So, yes, no bar fridge."

House screwed up his face in a candid display of grief. "She's such an evil witch. I can't believe I let her sleep with me yesterday."

"Sure she did." Wilson said with all the words of belief and none of the inflection.

Wilson removed his carefully folded shirts from his suitcase and hung them up in the room's one closet. "Aren't you going to unpack?"

"No, you're going to. I'm going down to the hotel's non-fridge type bar and work on my speech."

"You're giving a speech?"

"Cuddy certainly thinks so. Somehow I think she's mistaken."

"So you're going to drink before the opening tonight?"

"Think I was going to do this thing sober?"

"It crossed my mind, just for a split second. She'll be mad."

"All the better to start getting drunk now."

Wilson left the rest of his things unpacked and grabbed his wallet. "Wait for me."

Wilson sipped at his fruity cocktail and watched with disgust as House downed shot after shot of whiskey. "House, you've got four days to get stinking drunk, you don't have to accomplish it all on the first night."

House signaled for the barkeep to top his glass and raised it to Wilson. "I have not yet begun to drink."

"I'll bet I could bounce a quarter off your liver."

House smiled. "Not just my liver."

"Charming." But Wilson was beginning to feel the unmistakable mental fuzz of an alcohol induced buzz and smiled stupidly.

House narrowed his eyes at his oncologist friend with the deep, dark eyes and the brown floppy hair that would never thin if he lived to be a thousand. "Why'd you come to this conference with me?"

Wilson frowned a little. "Because Cuddy asked me to."

"Right. Because baby sitting a drunken House is your favorite hobby."

"House, drunken or sober, is my bestest friend and he has no idea when to stop soaking his poor liver or pissing off the hotel management." Wilson signaled for a refill of his own drink. "So I am here to make sure that doesn't happen."

House studied him. "You love me, that's the only reason you're here. You hate picking up the tab for me." House interrupted his own monologue to up tip his glass and swallow the molten liquid. "You hate cleaning up my social messes and the bathroom after I'm done entertaining myself in the shower."

"I do hate all of those things. As for loving you, I was kidding."

Wilson watched House swallow his drink and take cane in hand. "Where are you going?"

House looked at him with sober reason. "The conference has started."

"You're giving your speech drunk?"

"No speech. But if we want to eat the free prime rib dinner, we better get a table."

Wilson looked down at his tie-less shirt with the lemon juice stain. "I need to change."

"K. Meet you in there."

"Where will you be sitting?"

Without looking back, "Somewhere near the dessert trays."

-

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-

-

Wilson did not show and House sat through two boring speeches before he decided to abandon any hope for dinner and scout around for him. "Must have met a busty brunette." He muttered under his breath as he surveyed the hotel bar. "Probably getting married right now."

But there was no sign of Wilson. House slid his key card into the hotel room door. Wilson was not passed out on the bed or asleep in the bath tub. "Hm."

The room's phone rang. House snatched the receiver from its cradle. "Wilson, if you're out buying rings-"

"-Is this doctor House?"

House paused. "That depends. Are you carrying a grudge and a hand gun?"

"Sorry? This is Sergeant DeMarcus. There's a James Wilson down here in the hotel kitchen - claims he knows you."

"Did that cheater hit on your sister? Don't worry, I'll discipline him later myself."

"Quit the smart-ass routine and get down here, Doctor House. There's been an incident."

Houses' heart dropped to his shoes. He slammed the phone down and limped his way to the elevator as fast as a gimpy man could possibly move after a half bottle of Daniel's best.

_Incident._ House waited for the arrival of the frustratingly slow elevator to take him eleven stories down. _Incident_ was a polite, hotel manager word for something bad.

Wilson's broken another mirror. House imagined the red faced maître- de' in a monkey suit standing by while Wilson wrote another big, fat check to cover his deplorable lack of self control. _Idiot._

The elevator opened with a polite ring and House entered, punching _L_ for lobby. Hope entered, stood in the corner and took the ride with him.

Wilson was seated and people stood about for sure, some red faced, some as pale as kitchen witches.

The few really out of place persons were the two paramedics, a police officer who was taking notes (probably the same one who had called him), and a man lying on a gurney with the oxygen mask over his substantial nose. He wore a black suit and was clearly a member of the conference patronage at the hotel.

No one noticed House approach a much more sober looking Wilson and sit down next to him. "So? How'r you enjoying the conference so far?"

Wilson looked paler than most of the others and offered House a veiled sideways glance. He looked miserable. "I saved his life."

House glanced at the man on the gurney and nodded. "I agree, very upsetting. But-"

Wilson sighed, rubbing his face at the same time, a subconscious gesture that House recognized from the depths of years that Wilson was an emotional mess.

"-He was choking. They called for a doctor, I offered-"

"Of course, because you were the only possible doctor of choice in a hotel ball room of two thousand other doctors. Makes sense."

Wilson ignored Houses' interruptions. "I applied the Heimlich maneuver, dislodged the obstruction and he was fine."

"Which is why they're taking him away in an ambulance?"

"House, he didn't stay fine." Wilson tiredly explained. "I must have torn something, or ruptured something inside him. Suddenly he couldn't breath and there was nothing I could do."

House sighed, got to his feet, grabbed Wilson's arm and dragged him over to a more private bench outside the kitchen near the lobby. "Don't worry." He said to the watchful policeman. "We won't be making a run for it." House held up his cane. "See?"

House pushed Wilson down onto a cozy, padded velvet two-seater and perched beside him once more. "So he might die. So what? You want to adopt his children? Bed the wife as an apology? You saved his_ life_. End of story. The rest . . ." House shrugged, "could have been caused by anything."

Wilson. "I might have just killed a man and you're making jokes."

"Oh, stop breaking my heart. Your Jewish conscience is confessing to involuntary manslaughter before there's even a body. Before you know anything." House pointed his cane back to the kitchen and the man lying on the gurney. "You know who that is?"

When Wilson shook his head, House explained. "That's Doctor Maurice Terrance Morgan."

"What?"

House pursed his lips. "Yeah, I know - a_wful_ name isn't it?"

"House. This is bad news. This is even worse than I thought. Morgan's the top oncologist in the country. He's published more papers than I've had patients. If he dies-"

"-_**If **_he dies, you'll move up from being oncologist number five hundred and eighty-seven to five hundred and eighty-six_**. **_Relax, Wilson, this is good news, not bad news."

"How drunk are you? How could me killing a man who could squash my career like a benign polyp possibly be good news?"

"Because Morgan's had one foot in the grave for ten years. Long before you came along to play sloppy doctor – why do you always have to do that anyway? Twenty-four-seven, where ever you go, you act like a doctor. Don't you have any hobbies other than being a really, really nice guy?"

"I am a doctor."

"But not a great one. You should keep your profession to yourself more often. The Great and Fearful Oncologist Morgan has a dicky heart, he's fifty pounds over-weight if he's a hundred and best of all, he smokes like a coal-fired steamer."

"Yes, that is great news. What is your point?"

"My point is, he's going to die soon, so don't fret over anything you just may have but probably not hurried along a little. Besides, you probably didn't do anything wrong."

"You're inspirational."

"I do try."

Wilson still looked miserable. "The cop thinks I might need a criminal lawyer."

"The cop is probably right."

"I thought you thought I didn't do anything wrong."

"I do think that but Morgan might not." House sat back and tapped his cane on the thick carpeting. "So, know any really good criminal lawyers?"

"No, but I have a feeling I'm about to."

House patted Wilson's boney knee and stood up. "Wait here."

"Where're you going?"

"To find you a really good liar."

"_Lawyer_."

"Same thing."

-

-

-

"You're kidding me."

House blinked at her disbelieving tone over the speaker at his ear. "No. If I said Wilson had saved the entire hotel from a mysterious plague, I would be kidding. Wilson almost killing someone is believable. He's had so much practice."

House lowered his voice into the phone and Cuddy caught the worry in it even from as far away as Princeton. "Wilson might need a good lawyer. You know any?"

"Sure. I have _you_ on the payroll don't I?" She sighed and asked the ridiculous question. "What terrible thing is poster boy Wilson supposed to have done anyway?"

"He saved a man's life." House glanced over to his slouching, hand-wringing, lovable idiot of a friend.

_Tough luck._

_XXX_

_Part II ASAP_


	2. Chapter 2

Fairy God Doctor

Part II

By GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House attend a medical conference. One of them gets into some unexpected and serious trouble and the other must come to the rescue in an unexpected way.

Rating: ADULT. Pre-slash and SLASH. NC-17, M. Mature.

Pairing: House/Wilson

Discalimer: I don't own Gregory House, dang-nabit!

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_**I know this chapter is horribly late, but homework has been crazy. I finally have a day to myself and so: Part II**_

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"I'm checking on a friend of mine, Doctor Terrance Morgan?" House lied, leaning over the Emergency Room triage admittance desk with the plump near retirement nurse seated behind it. That she was working triage was testament to her iron will and experience. The stress of the department wrung out the young in less than two years and was religiously avoided by all those on the job long enough who possessed better sense but in some, will was the only sense.

The nurse checked her records. "Are you family?"

"_Friend_ - thus that word."

"We're only allowing family through."

House pursed his lips. "Morgan has no family in Chicago. He was at a medical conference with me." He affected his best _I'm a doctor too and you're trying my patience _face. "I'm Doctor House, Doctor Morgan's personal physician. I need to check his chart and make an examination. If you want proof of my identity, I can show you my Medical license, my Driver's License, my library card or if you're particularly dense, my stethoscope. Or you can call Doctor Cuddy at Princeton Plainsboro and confirm that I am who I say I am."

Nurse Almost Retired reached beneath her work-space and buzzed him in with a few angry jabs at the door lock release button. "Bed five." She barked at him as he passed into her domain.

House tried to look like he belonged and when no one was directly looking, he slipped into a doctors white coat. Finding bed five he pursued Morgan's chart, quickly memorizing the med's administered, the name of the attending and Morgan's vitals. House looked down at the unconscious man and muttered "How'd they find your heart through all that blubber?"

"Excuse me?"

House turned to encounter a slim, black, youngish and very hassled looking physician staring at him with eyebrows raised.

"You are?"

House stuck out his hand. "Doctor House. I'm a friend of Morgan's-"

The younger man started a bit. "Oh - Doctor House. From Princeton? I've heard of you. I'm Hetchfield."

House almost smiled - _cool!_ - and dropped almost all of the subterfuge. "Sorry, I shouldn't have bullied my way in but-" He glanced back around him to the thankfully still unconscious man, "I was worried."

"Understandable." The Emergency Room doctor walked around House to check on his patient himself. House breathed a sigh of relief. The physician's voice had transposed from that suspicious _Who the hell are you?_ to the more relaxed _Oh - you're in the club. Let's be friends_. "He's NYD. We were about to send him for a CT. No GI bleed as far as we can tell but he collapsed so..."

_Too much rare steak washed down with double Martini's_.

"I hear some idiot med' student gave him a Heimhlich. Probably punctured something."

"Yeah." House said. "Plenty of idiots like him around." Hetchfield glanced around at him and House quickly added "Or _her_." He gestured to Morgan. "Think it'd be okay if Radiology sent a copy of my friend's chart and CT, and whatever other tests you plan to perform on him to Princeton? I can't stay in town and I'd like to keep an eye on him. Just as a courtesy to him of course."

Hetchfield thought for a few seconds.

"Care of Department of Diagnostics." House finished, using his final bread crumb. "If he asks, just tell him Princeton Diagnostics is interested in his case." _He'll be far too flattered to question why._

Hetchfield nodded. "Sure. As long as he consents, I guess that'd be okay."

House could hear it in the young man's voice. He was anxious to assert his authority over the Emergency Department under him but was anxious not to alienate the country's most reputable Diagnostician - the miracle-performing Gregory House. "I'll send them myself."

House shook his hand and walked away. "Ass kisser." He said under his breath, but smiled just the same.

-

-

-

-

"What'd you find out?" Wilson met him at the hotel room door.

House shed his jacket and suit coat, tossing both onto a nearby red upholstered chair. "Nothing."

"Nothing?"

House looked at his pale faced friend. "Yeah, as in not something." House flung himself down on the bed and crossed his arms and legs, linking his hands above his head. "Relax. There was nothing to find - Morgan's still unconscious."

"_Still?"_

"Would you loosen your belt and let out the gas. You're so pumped outta shape, you're ascending bowel's going to explode."

"If he's still unconscious, it means I injured him."

"Or it means he drank one too many gin's. Or it means he's really sleepy or it means _nothing_." House sat up and massaged his twitchy thigh. "Morgan'll probably just wake up and demand to be sent back to his bar stool."

"How can you be flip? I may have seriously injured him. I must have done something wrong."

"Wow, you Jews take this martyr thing too way seriously. I'm not convinced you did anything. He might have collapsed because you bungled the Heimlich and he passed out from lack of breathing."

"I saw the food piece dislodge. It shot six feet from his mouth."

"That could have been one of a dozen food bits he was chewing on. The man looks like he'll eat anything twice."

Wilson rubbed his face. "House-"

"Would you sit down?? I've got the attending sending me copies of every test they plan to run. I'll know before they do if he's dying or just...terminally _fat_."

"How did you do that?" Wilson stared at his friend like he'd just seen a magic trick. "How'd you get Morgan's attending to be so nice? To _you?_ You're not nice. You're _never _nice. People get nervous when you act nice. I myself get a _rash_."

"I asked. I may not be nice but I can fake it whenever I want. I can fake anything - except an orgasm, that one's kind of a gimme."

Wilson slumped on the other king size. "I feel like I'm going to throw up."

House shook his head. Wilson was a nice guy. He was a nice doctor and a nice friend and a nice companion and he liked things in his life to be...nice. The one thing about wanting everything nice and being that nice was, it left him wound tighter than a piano wire so whenever anything in his life or practice did go wrong, Wilson sweated and fretted until he figured out some way to fix it which usually involved him apologizing and groveling followed by writing someone out a big fat check. And if that didn't work he wouldn't stop trying to fix it some other lame-ass nice way until he made everything much, much worse. So as the _jerk _guy, the _jerk_ doctor and the _jerk_ friend it was often up to him to ensure Wilson didn't act like so nice a guy that he ended up ruined or flat broke.

Ergo, less money for him. Less fun and worst of all - less Wilson. House sighed. Being a jerk wasn't all it was cracked up to be. "Come on." He said to Wilson. He even used his nice voice. "Go to sleep. Screw the rest of the conference. Tomorrow, we're going home."

House sipped an expensive whiskey and nourishing his devil-may-care facade while Wilson slept.

But, in truth, Morgan had not looked too good. Fat or drunk, the man had obviously taken ill and not from the cheap pate'. House looked over to where Wilson slumbered in his large bed, nestled down under the covers, soundlessly breathing in and out like a man who knew he was going down so may as well get some sleep in preparation. It was so unlike the way he himself handled problems. His best trick was to ignore them until they mushroomed to volcano-like pyroclastic blasts of destruction bulldozing him and everyone around him down in its incinerating wake. Not the best method to be sure and during one of those unfortunate phenomena he hardly slept at all.

Less importantly, on him the lack of sleep, food, Vicodin or sex showed in his tired eye bags, extra thick growth of facial fuzz, unbrushed hair and the need to drink himself into a stupor.

Wilson?

Wilson, other than a light watering along the bottom lids of his basset hound eyes, never showed the slightest sign of anything amiss. His shoes still glistened, his tie still _uglied_ - though neatly. Even his shirt stayed pressed and sparkling. His hair stayed glued in place and, to his own envy, seemed to have grown even thicker. Anyone who kept themselves that tightly controlled must have an outlet somewhere. House just hadn't yet quite figured out where Wilson's' pressure release valve was.

Not bowling. Not a drunk night at Mel's Three Bells. Certainly not sex. Wilson had bagged more than his share of that for one lifetime and if anything lately he seemed to be coiled tighter than ever. House never broached the subject other than to mock him mercilessly whenever his younger friend did something stupid - like help out a really fat guy, who by all rights ought to already be dead, by thrusting a hard thumb up into his chest cavity to shake loose a chunk of extra thick, toasted bruchetta.

Sometimes he wished he could take Wilson by the shoulders and shake him like a box of Sugarpuffs to see if the hidden prize will pop out. House felt a blush warm him from his toes to his hairline. Not _that_ prize.

Cuddy had a message waiting for Wilson when he arrived at work Monday morning. She stuck the note under his nose. "I'm sorry. Morgan's lawyer called and he wants to speak to your lawyer." Cuddy handed him another note. "Here's the name of your lawyer. He's the best constitutional and otherwise defense lawyer this hospital, and you, can afford. You're welcome and good luck."

House snatched the missive from Wilson's hand and skimmed it with a scowl. "Means nothing." Was his summation of the eleven by eight that now had Wilson sitting in his office visitor's chair sweating blood.

"I'm being sued, House. That means something."

"It means you need to keep your dishwater hands to yourself. And, yes, you are being," House agreed, "but he has no case."

"No case?" Wilson shook his head. "I injured the man. He could die."

"You helped him. He'll die anyway. Just sooner."

Wilson sat back, defeated in spirit and beat of body. "You've been sued lots of times, you're used to this." He sighed wearily.

"I'm also used to wiggling out of such unpleasant situations in a manner both clever and quick, while you're only used to pulling out your checkbook. Your comfortably-well-off ex-wives know what I'm talking about."

Wilson sighed and stood up. "I'm going to get some breakfast."

House sniffed. "It smells to me like you're going to pay a visit on Morgan's high priced lawyer."

Wilson slipped into his coat. "Well, sniff again." With historical accuracy, Wilson knew House wasn't going to let that lie. "Stay out of this one."

House stood up but didn't try a quarterback sack. "Don't be an idiot. I'm all you have."

"That sounds far more disturbing than it ought to. Don't worry, I'm leaving my checkbook here. I'm hungry. I've got a long day ahead of me fielding House insults."

House watched his friend exit his office and, with misgivings, let him go unmolested.

He picked up his phone.

House joined Wilson in the cafeteria, plopping down uninvited in the chair opposite. "Great news."

Wilson was dubious. "Oh?"

House helped himself to an untouched slice of cooling toast. "Morgan had a stroke."

Wilson turned three shades whiter. "How's that good news? Now I've crippled him."

House chewed contentedly. "Wow, you really need to stop reading comic books. Aside from the red tights in your underwear drawer, you are not Superman."

"He had a stroke. I probably ruptured his diaphragm. He must have bled like a Easter pig."

House munched a slice of crisped bacon. "So his stomach atrophies. He can spare the organ; he's got plenty of calories stored up in that anterior hump he calls a abdomen."

"Did your mother not hug you enough?"

"Relax." House handed over a file folder. "Here's his chart. Read just the last page. Morgan had gastric bypass surgery fifteen years ago and judging from his size, it didn't take. He's developed scar tissue on his duodenum that's interfering with the function of his diaphragm, which is interfering with his breathing. That's also why he got so fat again -- no exercise. He gets winded too quickly and I'm guessing he never saw anyone about that because he didn't want to give up his food again. In other words, you may have dislodged the food, but your treatment didn't cause the diaphragm to spasm, the diaphragm spasmed which caused the choking. Morgan had tachypnea. He aspirated that food. The straining to breath caused his BP to shoot up and _that_ caused the rupture." House said.

Wilson read through Houses' findings. "How much of this is medical reason based on actual data and how much are you hoping is true?"

House rolled his eyes. "I'm not inventing! Given his medical history and King Henry the Eighth appetite, it's a reasonable diagnosis. The tachypnea caused him to sharply inhale and that's why the food got stuck. You saved his ass, but you didn't hurt him. He was already hurt."

"I doubt you'll be able to convince his lawyers. And you have no way to confirm he has intestinal scars."

House sighed. "I'll get confirmation, don't worry. His high blood pressure caused the stroke. That and years of the fatty food-group diet."

Wilson sat back and rested tense muscles. His mind had other plans. "I don't know..."

House snatched the file back. "Stop playing with that Clark Kent hair and relax."

-

-

-

Wilson shoved a subpoena under House's nose. "It's going to trial." He read the words out loud and clear for House who listened politely.

"I am to present myself (he read), 'to the county court clerk November 17, 2009 to hear the charges', etc, against me." Wilson looked sick. "Did the CT show anything?"

House hated to say it. "Inconclusive." He reached out and took the summons, reading over it quickly. "But don't worry."

Wilson snatched the summons back. "House! - You've made it all better. I don't know what got into me." He sat. "I _said_ this is a _subpoena ad testificandum_**. **I have to show and testify, be found liable and get punished because if I don't show, I'm in breach of a summons and I'll get punished."

House took his cane in hand and, with some effort, stood. "And I said, don't worry." He limped form the room. "Be back in a day or two." He said over his shoulder. "Try not to save any bystanders while I'm gone."

-

-

-

"You're going to ruin a man's life."

Terrance Morgan did not answer his visitor. He couldn't. An oxygen mask obscured his face and he was asleep.

House honestly thought the man would be awake when he arrived. The stroke had been a minor one but perhaps more incapacitating than he expected, as was now evident. "Wilson was trying to help you." House stared at the unconscious physician. "He _did_ help you."

House stood and looked down at the doctor turned patient and thought not for the first time how convenient it would be if Terrance Morgan died right about now.

Suddenly Morgan's eyes popped open and House found lucid gray irises staring into his own.

House did not flinch. "You're awake, finally." He watched the reaction of the other man as he said his next words. "I'm not going to let you ruin him, you know."

Softly, "Everybody dies."

-

-

-

Wilson was in a bath robe when he answered his door to House, who walked in un-invited. "Everything's going to be fine." House said as a greeting.

Wilson closed his door and stared after House who made himself comfortable in Wilson's easy chair.

"What do you mean? What's fine?"

"I don't think Morgan's going to sue."

Wilson sighed. "He already has, House. I've got the paperwork. I've got a lawyer. I've got my insurance company saying things like 'You've been a valuable client but.' It's happening."

House stood and walked over to Wilson. He was limping quite heavily.

"Take a vicodin. You're limping so badly, _my_ leg hurts."

"Sympathy pain." House said. He didn't take a pill. He didn't stop until he was standing no more than a foot from his friend.

Wilson waited, growing ever more nervous at House's odd behavior. "What's going on?" He asked and, suspiciously, "What did you do?"

House shook his head and let his cane drop to the floor with a clatter. "Nothing. But I _am_ going to do something."

To Wilson's frozen shock, House leaned in and kissed him on the lips. The most extraordinary thing about it was not how bizarre it was to suddenly be kissed by his longest and closest beer drinking buddy, but how soft House's lips were and how gentle and downright _sexual_ the kiss was.

When House drew back, Wilson's head was spinning but he gathered thought enough to articulate, "Are you high?"

House shook his head. "No." And quickly kissed him again. This time, there was the tip of his friends tongue darting inside his mouth and House's long musician's fingers tickling his ribcage.

And, fuck, if that didn't feel even sexier.

-

-

-

Wilson woke up feeling unsure about something. Either about what had happened the night before or about with whom.

Then he opened his eyes to find House's face mashed into the down of his favorite pillow, his hair disheveled and his body beneath the covers as naked as the day he was born. Wilson could feel his own nakedness and was overcome by a weird sense of both satisfaction and shame.

He had just slept with his best friend. Last night, he and House had made out. He'd had sex with House. Anyway he sliced it, Wilson couldn't get his head completely around the idea. But they had done it. The whole shebang: Kissing, gentle love-making and hard, carnal sex. From everything he believed about himself and knew about House's sexual proclivities, it ought to feel wrong but it didn't. It ought to be wrong but he was in every way sure that it wasn't.

Weird? Yeah, _weird_ covered the rest.

Wilson watched House softly breathing, the long, golden lines of his back rising and falling. He smelled good. And, Wilson remembered now with ever more clarity in the dim light of morning, House tasted good. His best and longest friend had, in every possible way, felt good too.

_So_ very warm, soft and good.

Wilson recalled tiny details of the previous evening's hours in the living room, on the way to the bedroom, clothes being shed here and there; lips and hands never stopping, never ceasing their passionate demand and grasping at flesh. House had all but devoured him like a starving man.

Wilson remembered with blushing ears House's very naked, very male body; the soft feathering of hair, the muscled legs, the sloping shoulders with skin surprisingly silky (He had never expected to discover that another man's skin could be so soft). He had also never considered ever wanting another man before. Not House or anyone else. Why would he have?

But now that he had tasted a man's body -- specifically House's -- he wondered why he had never been curious. _Maybe I didn't want to admit to myself that I was __curious._

House had clearly been curious and with guts enough to find the answer.

Wilson let the questioning rest. It didn't matter anyway. He thoroughly approved of House's scientific method. They were a couple now in every sense of the word. And he had been, via hours of on-off, on-off love-making, thoroughly educated in all things physical-House until reaching one undeniable conclusion:

House was a _hottie_.

XXXX

Part III ASAP


	3. Chapter 3

Fairy God Doctor Part III

By GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House attend a medical conference. One of them gets into some unexpected and serious trouble and the other must come to the rescue in an unexpected way.

Rating: ADULT. SLASH. NC-17, M. Mature.

Pairing: House/Wilson

Disclaimer: I don't own Gregory House, dang-nabit!

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Wilson could not believe the last two days spent in House's presence; House in his bed, in his face - in his _mouth_. He rolled over and stared at his lover the second morning, wondering if he really did just spend the last forty-eight hours having intermittent, incredible sex with his best friend.

But there was that mouse-brown sprinkled-with-grey hair, and the straight nose staring at the ceiling softly snoring. Wilson laid a single finger on the potato brush growth of House's cheek; the brambly surface had left his own clean shaven skin rosy with abrasion. But the French kissing had been well worth the sacrifice of a few shed epithelials.

A tiny wrinkle formed between Wilson's eyebrows. This close, House looked older than he remembered. But what did he remember? House had always been older by nearly a decade. Yet his face had never changed; not in his mind; not in his memory or in his well-rooted _sense_ of what House was and had always been. Or how he looked from day by day.

But, yes, House had aged. The years and stress, the loss of Stacey, the fear of having Cuddy in his life as more than a boss (a difficult enough give and take for House as it was), and the ever present pain - surely that too - had all stripped off their individualized slices of him. House was thinner than he had ever seen him, his cheeks sallow, almost hollow. Wilson could not help but wonder if House's - if this surprise sexual attack and consummation of their friendship - was the older man's final grasp at a morsel of happiness. Finally. At last.

Despite the agony of the daily betrayal of his leg, House had managed to retain a vulnerability in him that most missed as they looked over, quickly dismissed him, and passed on. One look; a cane, jeans, a scowl, a grimace, the mouth going mince-meat; a mile a minute, the brain going a bewildering thousand, . . .all that and still the more obstuse of the world dismissing him as a cantankerous (albeit genius), freak.

Wilson saw far, far beyond that. Deeper - to the root-in-soil of House. He knew what grew there. He knew the tiny living things House hid from everyone - the wonders encased in a man in pain and in need. And he knew also that he loved them very much. And he loved House.

The quiet peace of the room was shaken by the trilling phone and Wilson hurried to still it before it woke House who, for a change, was enjoying a restful sleep-in.

Wilson spoke softly into the mouth-piece, "Hello?" Sitting up, he eased his long legs from under the warmth of the covers to the shivers of the morning cool of his tastefully decorated bedroom. All the colors and nuances _him_. Amber's feminine presense he had gradually, gently bannished months ago. His toes curled on the chilled tiles. He must remember to adjust the heat setting; House preferred a warmer chamber.

Wilson spoke into the phone. "This is Wilson." He whispered until he made it to the kitchen, his goosed flesh protesting its lack of clothes.

"Doctor Wilson?"

It was his lawyer. It was early. _Too early for a man who earned five hundred an hour without lifting a finger._ "Yes. Mister Harcourt?"

"Yes. I'm wondering if you've heard?"

Wilson smiled a little to himself, unwilling just yet to let go of the memory of the delightfully naughty sounds that House had made the previous night. "Uhm, no. Heard what?'

"Doctor Morgan is dead."

-

"Your troubles are over, Doctor Wilson. I'll send you the final bill, unless you have any speeding tickets you want defended?"

Wilson frowned. Harcourt's sense of humor - and timing - sucked. "Dead?" Wilson's heart leaped in his chest. It was the oddest sensation: the quivering organ dancing with sheer delight, and drumming in abject terror, both at the same time. Wilson could not help but to himself put the question: Did Morgan die due to the physically detrimental, and inevitable, complications his own self-indulgent lifestyle or did he, Wilson, kill him? "What happened?"

"Attending wouldn't say, Morgan's lawyer said." Harcourt sounded like he was reading a script. "That's, I'm assuming, Doctor-talk for 'we don't really know.'"

Wilson remembered something horrible. A terrible, awful thing he remembered, standing there beside him in the white and sparking clean kitchen. "I...see. Uh. Okay."

"Okay?" Harcourt's voice said he had obviously taken on a man deficient in the subtlies of victory. "It's downright Hallelujah, Doc', for you that is. _I've_ just lost a bundle in potential fees."

Wilson could care less a tic's ass-hole for Harcourt's problems from that second forward. "Right." He hung up without a twinge of conscience. The terrifying memory, the awful thing with its black, unblinking stare, did not look away.

Jesus. Wilson's heart thumped like a war drum. Oh-my-best-friend's-god-_Jesus!_ He whispered it, afraid of whoever might hear and raise an alarm._ "House..." _

_-_

_"_House."

Wilson shook his friend's shoulder vigorously. This was no time to sleep, or to ignore the man over which you just may have committed a heinous crime for your own selfish agenda.

House stirred, rolled over and looked at Wilson with sleep-slit eyes. "No bacon odor." Yawning luxuriously, like a cat after a satisfying sleep full of dreams of warm mice and helpless baby pigeons, "No toast." He added.

"What?"

"Wake me when breakfast is done, not _before_."

"No breakfast." Wilson had slipped on underwear, slacks and a crisp shirt. Somehow, standing over House, facing him with his spent penis flopping around between his legs had not seemed a fitting show of Angry Wilson. "House, we need to talk."

House groaned.

Wilson knew House hated that opening line and, like clock-work, complained. "_You_ need to talk. I need sustenance." House looked up at him with a frustratingly sexy smirk. "I mean the kind that goes in my mouth and doesn't squir - "

"-_House!" _Wilson could feel himself caving, and hardening just a bit, before the fight that he wanted to start had even begun. "This is serious." Wilson swallowed a lump of bitter fear. "You went to see Morgan in the hospital."

"I already told you that. He wouldn't talk to me."

"Well…" Wilson had no idea, really, of what he was frightened and mad about. House would never.... "Morgan's dead."

House sat up, subconsciously rubbing at his thigh.

A thigh, Wilson remembered, as scarred but still sexy, especially the sweet, inner side. "What...?" Wilson paused. This couldn't…? No. But... He squared his shoulders. "Did you..._do _something to him?"

House stopped his perpetual motion of palm on damaged-aching-leg and stared at Wilson as though they had only just met. "_**Do**_??" House mimicked. "Some_**thing**_??" Like what, give him an air-bubble? Smother him with a pillow? Kill him with guilt?"

House threw off the covers and Wilson got an eyeful of House in natural full-morning light. Golden skin and light feathering of hair over valleys of muscle shallowed by time. Delicious pink cock and smooth balls. The still formed, but older, remnants of an athletic body. The signs and lines of a man who used to run and leap and lift, all now tilted forward with the fatigue of years of unrelenting pain.

"Nice to know what you think of me." House said, struggling to his feet and pulling away from the reflexive helping hand Wilson extended. Years of unrelenting habit. "If you mean: Did I _kill_ him? The answer is - no!"

"Why did you go to see him, then?" Wilson didn't know why he couldn't leave it lie as that. Relentless memory. Life with House – a guessing and guessing again game. A marathon of figuring; to try and understand even half of half of what House was. The man was so goddamn frustrating and so unbelievably captivating, you never knew if you wanted to stomp away in righteous fury or come all over him.

Wilson knew from his own history with the man that he lost too often to be absolutely sure about House. Any part of him, really. "Did you, did you _kill_ a man to get me into bed??"

House laughed.

Despite his determination to ignore all of House's deflecting insults, that one hurt.

"Tuck that ego away before you get an embolism. You think the only way I can get off is to murder a human being? Or that I think _that_ much of your dick?"

Yet Wilson saw the flicker of House's eyes and they travelled down his body with the leering leftovers of a very lovely time in bed. "You didn't seem to mind him last night."

House looked away. "I was only kidding. Just again and again."

Wilson accepted that it was a House-ish an apology, and the only one he was likely to get. "House. Promise me-"

"-I did not hurt him. He was dying. He was probably dying for months; long before you and your fumbling fist got to him."

Wilson stared at House, defying him to lie, or to continue lying. Or to see if House was indeed telling him the truth. "So you, Gregory House, man of limping action, drove an hour to just . . .talk to him?"

House set his jaw and began a visual search for his cane. "If it makes you feel better for me to say it again, I did _not_ kill Morgan. He died of his own idiocy."

Wilson found the cane and handed it to him, now feeling rather foolish at his quick and ill-conceived assumption. House, in his memory, had never hurt anyone - at least not permanantly. "Here."

House took the cane with a gentle hand, one finger brushing his friend-lover's white knuckles. Wilson had a flash of insight that the touch was not accidental. An oddly endearing gesture from the physically reserved House. Though the previous night he had not acted, in any manner what-so-ever, reserved. It still seemed unreal that he had slept with House, though House seemed to be taking it as a perfectly acceptable and natural progression of their friendship.

The four months of his willed absense from House's life suddenly flooded back, filling him with shame at his own cowardice. All those weeks, he had harboroed but hid the surety that House still meant as much to him as ever. Maybe more.

But, until he had finally acknowledged it and returned, shuffling his size twelves, he'd had no inkling of how much he had meant to House. House's confession: "If you're coming back because of my pathetic neediness, that's okay with me."

A veritable stomach-full of confession on House's part. And as kind a gesture as House had ever layed on him; by not even mentioning how much he had been hurt by his best friend's abandonment in the first place. Wilson suddenly remembered not even asking after House's skull fracture after the DBES. Not bothering to inquire of Forman or Chase or anyone if House was going to be okay. An equally selfish oversight, also, was never thanking House for risking his life and sanity to save a woman who hated him.

Wilson suddenly felt the desperate need to touch him, to make a physical connection, however slight, and he stroked a gentle thumb across House's left temple. _Sometimes I'm a real son-of-a-bitch_.

House took the gesture for face-value. "You believe me?" He asked. Wilson lost himself in the sparkling blue of the man's hypnotizing eyes just for a second before dropping his hand and replying, "Yes, I believe you."

Then Wilson shook his head, adding, "I never had any solid reason to think . . .what I just thought - _and_ said. It was stupid."

"That's the smartest thing you've said so far."

Wilson felt a bit anxious as House pushed himself to his feet. Because of the shin-level, Eastern-European style of his queen-sized bed, it took greater effort than usual for House to stand. Wilson made a mental note to buy and have delivered a second, thick mattress; a soft, pillow-top variety. "You're not leaving, are you?" Wilson glanced at the clock - _Sunday, 10:21am_. "We haven't had breakfast yet."

House brushed passed him. "Don't worry, James Juan, I'm just taking a leak."

XXXXXX

Part IV ASAP


	4. Chapter 4

Fairy God Doctor Part IV

By GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House attend a medical conference. One of them gets into some unexpected and serious trouble and the other must come to the rescue in an unexpected way.

Rating: ADULT. SLASH. NC-17, M. Mature.

Pairing: House/Wilson

Disclaimer: I don't own Gregory House, dang-nabit!

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Several weeks of calming nights of cold beer, moderately good television and above average sex with his old best friend-with-new-benefits James Wilson had painted a shy smile on House's lips. Lisa Cuddy did not notice the smile or the reason for the far away, slightly dreamy look on his face as House and Doctor Wilson parted ways at the entrance to Princeton Plainsboro Hospital. The Oncology Department head ambled away down the hall, a just-there spring in his step.

House limped over but before he could say a syllable, Dean of Medicine, Lisa Cuddy, hooked pink painted nails into the tender flesh of House's upper arm and drew him resolutely, almost violently, into her office. She released him and moved to her seat.

"Is this some sort of dominatrix come-on?" House asked as she glared at him from behind her desk. "'Cause any other time of my life I would have been interested, flattered even, but now I kinda' have a thing with-"

"-Are you insane?"

"He's not _that_ bad."

"Do you have _any_ idea how much trouble you're in?"

"Well, I admit, it does take some getting used to. I mean all that Jewish guilt! And you wouldn't _believe_ what that man can do with a stick of Challah."

Cuddy shook her head, trying to dispel the confusion. "What are you talking about?"

House paused while the confusion grew fat. "I. . .don't. . .um, what are _you_ talking about?"

"I'm talking about the death of Doctor Terrance Morgan. I'm talking about your visit to Morgan the day he died, and I'm talking about you being there _just_ before he died."

"Oh." House shrugged and looked around at the door. Cuddy hadn't locked it, he didn't think. "So was I."

Cuddy sighed. "House, I know you didn't do anything to Morgan. The guy was the East Coast's leading example of a walking and massive embolism, but why did you go to see him? Why then? Why, when you had _nothing_ to do with the case?"

To House it was simple, "Because he was suing Wilson. I went there to talk him out of it."

"And?"

"And he wasn't talking."

"Well, it doesn't matter now but had it gone anywhere, you know Wilson would have been vindicated."

House shrugged again. Serene simplicity marked his expression. "Now we'll never know."

Cuddy drew an envelope from her drawer with the sad resignation of many years of House-collateral damage control. "Someone thinks we will." She thrust it at him. "This came express ten minutes ago. You weren't in your office."

House tore open and read the one page missive. "A Hearing?"

"An informal Hearing in lieu of filing for a formal one --a "courtesy". Morgan's insurance company is demanding a preliminary inquiry into his death. The post-mortum on Morgan was inconclusive-"

"-That's crap! His duodenum was caked with scar tissue. He was a hundred pounds overweight and drank like a whale."

"He died after Wilson, quote-unquote, _saved_ him. Now they want to ensure that he really died from Wilson's actions, as his relatives are claiming, rather than from over-indulgence, which would void the Accident and Disability benefit. An extra half million, if you're wondering, that naturally the insurance people would prefer not to pay."

House dropped the letter into her wicker waste basket. "Naturally."

-

-

-

"Oh my god."

House didn't have a snappy answer for his worry-worn partner. "I'm ready to testify, if it comes to that - medically - that you did nothing wrong. Again - medically."

"It won't be you who makes the final decision." Wilson slumped on House's black couch, his legs crossed on the coffee table. He was nursing his third beer and feeling sorry for himself.

House waved his fourth beer in the air, stumbling over Wilson's thin legs like a toddler. "Where's my cane?"

"In the closet."

House retrieved it, silently cursing Wilson's clean-gene. "No, it'll be a panel of attorneys on an eager trip to be elected judges. People who know nothing about medicine. That's why I need to be there. What's your lawyer doing to prepare for this, anyway?"

"He's sifting through disclosure, he said. Surveillance tapes from the hotel, records from the hospital, whatever interviews the other lawyers have already conducted, his own interviews. . ."

House popped a fresh beer and sat down again. "When is he talking to you?"

"Day before the panel hearing." Wilson wondered, "Why haven't they spoken to you until now? Why the letter?"

"I don't know. I'm not directly involved I guess. Doesn't matter. I'll go, I'll tell them what I medically know-"

"-_suspect_, you mean."

"I mean _know_. Morgan's been slowly dying for years."

Wilson scratched a thumb between fuzzy brows. "You can't be sure-"

House slammed his empty beer down. "_Why _do youcare? He's dead, you're alive. Game over."

Wilson looked miserable. "I just want....to be _sure_ I didn't screw up. I'd like to know for certain I didn't kill him; that it wasn't my actions that-"

"-it wasn't. Have another beer."

"But how can you be sur-?"

"-because I'm the genius, remember? And in case you hadn't noticed, you've killed lots of patients, Cancer-Doc'." House's next words were tighter. Clipped. For a reason he could not define, he was suddenly pissed off with Wilson. "Stop acting shocked as though this is the first time someone's died while you had your finger on the pulse. Stop pretending you're anything but _glad_ Morgan is dead."

Wilson's expression congealed into anger. "Sorry. Maybe _you_ can shrug off a death you may or may not have had a hand in; I can't." Wilson stood up. "I'm not like you, House - I'm human!"

House listened to Wilson's storming feet behind him, hurrying off to bed. He waited on the couch, still as a corpse, until the brushing of teeth came to an end, the turning off of running water, the slamming of medicine cabinet, and the pulling back of sheets as Wilson climbed into bed in the next room.

House sat for a while longer, feeling tired and old. Then he limped on silent, socked feet to the bedroom, shed his clothes and crawled into bed beside his emotional, fret-fired lover.

Wrapping his arms and legs around him, he spoke. Though Wilson did not move, House knew he was still awake and listening. "This informal hearing thing is good. The insurance company sure as hell don't want you to be guilty. It'll save them a pile. And you didn't do anything wrong." He said softly.

An expanding sigh, "You don't know that." Wilson finally answered.

"Yes I do." House found Wilson fingers and laced his hands into his. "Yes I do. Take it from the world's best diagnostician -- you did nothing wrong."

Wilson laughed once. An ironic puff of his lips. "How can you be so sure?"

"Because," House said strongly, not believing it, "You never do anything wrong. You're a nice Jewish kid from a nice Jewish home who's terrified of being bad. You put me to shame."

House could almost feel the smile through the strength of Wilson's body. "Do I?"

House kissed the warm flesh. "That wasn't a compliment. Now shut-up and go to sleep."

-

-

-

-

"You are Doctor James Wilson? You currently head the Department of Oncology at Princeton Plainsboro Hospital?"

Wilson cleared his throat. "Yes."

The red-eyed family of Terrance Morgan sat in the luxurious waiting area outside the heavy double oak doors into the conference room of Streagley and Manner, one of the heftier insurance companies in the state of New Jersey. Only important people, the shut doors seemed to say, like doctors and lawyers allowed inside.

Inside, Steagley and Manner's three attorneys put pertinent questions to Doctor Wilson while, next to Wilson, sat his own lawyer whispering things into his ear whenever the questions were too vague; and next to him, sat House.

"When did you notice Doctor Morgan's distress at the hotel that night?"

Wilson swallowed audibly, feeling sick under such close scrutiny.

House sat, staring at the panel of three lawyers who were all looking back, counting on Wilson being as innocent as they hoped, and that their late, fat client was guilty of his own premature death by overindulgence of rich food and drink, rather than the doctor's bungled attempts at Samaritan treatment.

The oldest, sternest looking of the panel of three asked, "Had you been drinking that night?"

It was obvious they hated asking the question, since it strengthened the family's side of the matter and not theirs.

"I had a few drinks with Doctor House."

Again hating to ask, "How many is a few?"

Wilson tried to remember as his lawyer had coached him to remember, as little detail as possible and as weakly truthful as his "annoyingly moral" conscience would allow him to get away with. "I think it was two. I wasn't drunk."

That seemed to ease the mind's of the insurance-lawyer men. "Now, when you noticed that Mister Morgan was choking, what did you do then?"

"I approached him from behind and made a quick examination-"

"-how? Examine how?"

"A visual examination. Morgan was red in the face and his lips were cyanotic."

"Blue?"

"Yes."

"So he was already in grave shape by the time you were near enough to assess him?"

"Yes. It was clear his airway was blocked and his wife was already pounding his back-"

"-how hard?" The thinnest of the lawyers asked, hoping someone else had not caused Morgan's death. Everyone in the room was counting on Morgan having been a grease-eating, blubber-toting drunk.

"Not enough to cause injury, I don't think." Wilson recalled the feeble slaps of the tiny woman on the lipid back rolls of her husband. "That's when I applied the Heimlich."

"That couldn't have been easy. Doctor Morgan was overweight I think?" The youngest of the lawyers remarked. A statement all recognized as polite for _Yes our client was morbidly obese, but respect, after-all. "_How overweight?" It was all down in the records in front of them of course.

"Well, I'd estimate between sixty-five and seventy-five pounds overweight."

"Were you able to easily get your arms around Doctor Morgan?"

"Yes. I needed to position my fists just below his sternum and I was able to do that."

"And then what?"

"I applied several quick abdominal thrusts until the obstruction dislodged."

"That was quick action, Doctor." Polite for _Why did you have to be so damn helpful?_

The questions seemed to have come to an end for now. "Now, Doctor Wilson. We requested Doctor House be here to affirm or dispute if he has any doubt as to your proper action that night, and to give us his medical opinion of Doctor Morgan's over-all health prior to the incident."

Wilson wasn't sure he understood. "Doctor House-?"

"Yes." The oldest lawyer turned to House. "We understand you visited Morgan several times while he was in the hospital. And that you knew him, as a friend and colleague prior to that."

Nest to him, Wilson felt House stiffen.

"We were acquainted." House answered and Wilson heard the unmistakable ring of lie in his tone.

Old lawyer read from his information. "You visited him once while he was in Emergency and twice in recovery, one of those visits on the day he died. A Doctor, "He checked his notes, "Hetchfield mentioned you and Morgan having been friends."

Wilson felt his blood thicken and cool while his heart beat out a rhythm to rival a marching band. House seemed oblivious to it and answered. "Sure. Morgan and I'd been colleagues for years."

"But you lived and worked in different states." Youngish lawyer pointed out.

Smooth as pudding, "The necessities of the medical practice." House's voice said that things like this always happened between doctors. It was a club hazard. "Of course we'd lost touch some-what."

"I see." Youngish lawyer said, when he clearly didn't. "What is your opinion of Morgan's general health when you _did_ spend time together? Did he take care of himself?"

Propriety forbade any group-shared round of laughter.

"Unfortunately, no." House said with just the right mix of kindness and regret. "Terrance was always a little...loose...with his health. He drank, probably too much. He ignored his doctor's orders, specifically his Gastroenterologist - the physician who performed Terrance's stomach stapling." House shrugged. "When he started to put on all that weight again, well, Terrance figured he should be able to live the way he wanted to. I warned him but . . ." House trailed off, leaving it up to the lawyers to eagerly fill in the rest.

House was really into his impromptu role of the privately grieving doctor-friend. His performance almost had Wilson convinced.

The oldest lawyer leaned over to whisper into the ear of his youngest hatchling, then he said. "Yes, well, I see." Then he put the question directly. "According to the medical examiner, the autopsy findings were inconclusive. Now--"

"But the family didn't allow a full autopsy." House interrupted.

The lawyers all nodded their affirmation like well-dressed performing monkeys. "No. Which is why we're holding this informal inquiry. We're trying to determine if we have evidence enough to demand a full autopsy."

"But it's been weeks." Wilson said. "He'd be buried by now."

"Yes." Oldish lawyer said. "But if we have sufficient reason to raise probable doubt in the medical examiner's findings, we would be able to gain a court order for an exhumation and a full autopsy."

"Look for enteral scarring."

Old lawyer said, "Excuse me?"

House leaned forward, folding his hands on the highly polished table. "If or when you do, have an independent medical examiner check for scarring on Morgan's duodenum."

"Do you suspect something, Doctor House? Something the autopsy failed to notice?"

"The medical examiner didn't miss anything that he was _allowed_ to examine. If you're asking my opinion of what happened to Terrance Morgan, as a Professional Diagnostician, I suspect tachypnea, or rapid shallow breathing, brought on by diaphragmatic paresis - weakness in other words. Morgan wasn't able to breath because prior to choking, he wasn't breathing _normally. _The scar tissue on his duodenum caused a kinetic interruption in the function of the diaphragm. He could not expel the food and even if he had not had food in his trachea, Morgan would still have gone cyanotic. The diaphragmatic spasm caused respiratory insufficiency resulting in tachypnea and the subsequent bolus obstruction." House sat back.

Wilson felt like a corner had been turned in his perpetual worry since this whole thing began. House was lying and telling the truth. _He's trying to save me_. The man's infuriating habit of lying was perhaps, not all bad.

"In my opinion," House concluded, encouraging no doubt in the three minds of the lawyers, that he was correct. "Doctor Wilson's actions saved the man's life, and that's _all_ they did."

-

-

-

-

Wilson tore at House's shirt, launching several buttons in all directions. He fumbled at the belt of House's suit pants - not needed now. No clothes required in this room. None wanted.

House smiled and chuckled at his lover's clumsy fingers as Wilson, drunk with relief, his penis hard beneath his own slacks, licked and bit at House's scratchy throat and rubbed eager fingers against the older man's own confined and hardening penis. "I love you." Wilson said, his mouth never leaving house's chest.

Letting his blind feet guide them both to the bed and the muscled calves of House's perfect legs locate its edge, Wilson pushed House down onto the comforter and peeled off his pants and the rest of his clothing. Then, without taking his eyes off House's body laying ready beneath him, irises dilated in anticipation, he deftly stripped himself and lay down on top of him.

Neither said another word; only flesh spoke and Wilson lead the music. He gyrated his hips and ground his stiff erection up and down on House's cock, moaning at the heady, never dulling thrill of fucking his best friend. He loved that House was his in every way. "I'm in charge." He whispered into his ear the new joke that someday was to become an old one.

For Wilson it was no joke. He wanted House under his sexual slavery. He lived for taking him when and where he wanted him. And House seemed to live for it to.

"Your _my_ fuck." Wilson whispered into his ear while his hands and hips never stopped their movement. "aren't you?'

House did not answer, only kissed back whenever he could capture Wilson's lips with his own.

"You like this, don't you baby?" Wilson said, no doubt as to the answer. "You want me to do this, don't you? You want to give it up to me. Admit it." Wilson raised his head and stared into House's shining blues, loving them. Fucking loving them so much it _hurt_. "Right?" He said again as he quickened his thrusts against House's pink, hard cock, another part of the man Wilson could never again live without.

"You're going to give it to me whenever I want it. _Where_-ever, _how_-ever . . ."

This was a sex ritual with them -- Wilson asserting his sexual domination, pouring it over his lover like the finest liquid and House drinking it up like an alcoholic.

Wilson grabbed House's hair with his hands, gently enough not to hurt but firm enough that his control and lust would not go un-noticed. "You love this, baby. You'll give this to me forever, won't you? Won't you? Say yes and I will. Come on, just say yes, baby. Just fucking say yes and I will."

Wilson's cock grew even harder at the small whine of pleasure and pain that escaped from between House's lips and his tiny, most desperate _Yes_.

Secondary goal won and so Wilson moaned like a beast until his cock fired the primary goal -- coming hard. He rocked and rubbed himself against House like a man possessed of nothing but the hunger for his lover's flesh and never, ever a thing more.

Wilson shot his cum between them and continued to grind and jerk until he had no strength left in his body. He hadn't even noticed if House had come until he rolled off and saw by the amount if fluid spread over their abdomens that it was clearly the result or two orgasms.

Wilson played two fingers through the sweaty strands of House's hair. "I love your body." He rolled toward him and gave him a goodnight kiss on the lips. "And I love you."

House kissed back and watched idly as Wilson cleaned himself off with a tissue and pulled the covers up over his cooling skin, rolling away to find sleep. House watched Wilson settle into the rhythms of dreams and then cleaned himself off as well.

Pulling up the covers he lay staring at the ceiling. Wilson was one of a kind and there was no way anything or anyone was going to take him away. Though he had rarely said the words, he loved Wilson. Always had. For a long time had never said it. Until one day waking up in Emergency after the "knife thing" as Wilson now referred to it.

Ever since that day, House felt that Wilson was, absolutely, his life-ground. Wilson was his -- carried for him -- the very best and kindest qualities, and so he was able to, when near enough to him, stand the closest he ever got to feeling they way most people, he supposed, felt. It was incredible to him that all of that walked around in expensive shoes beneath as dopey a smile as that.

"Ditto." He whispered to the sleeping man.

XXX

Part V ASAP


	5. Chapter 5

Fairy God Doctor Part V

By GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House attend a medical conference. One of them gets into some unexpected and serious trouble and the other must come to the rescue in an unexpected way.

Rating: ADULT. SLASH. NC-17, M. Mature.

Pairing: House/Wilson

Disclaimer: I don't own Gregory House, dang-nabit!

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"House."

Cuddy's voice, high and strained like her bra was two sizes too small, walked up behind him. House cringed. It was her trouble voice. Not her trouble, _his._

"Doctor Cuddy." House tapped the elevator button with the rubber tip of his cane. His flame cane today. It was his fun cane and today he felt like fun.

Cuddy followed him into the elevator and, for the moment, they were its only two occupants. "My phone has been ringing all morning."

"It wouldn't do that if you answered it."

"Don't be an ass." Today's Cuddy was not fun. "Morgan's family attorney has been trying to get a hold of you."

"Oh?" He could care less. Wilson was safe and that was all that mattered today or tomorrow. "Morgan's dead and it wasn't Wilson's fault. I don't care about the rest."

Cuddy thrust a piece of paper at him. "Call him or I'll give him your private cell number, your mother's cell number, your beer delivery guy's number and the number of your favorite hooker." She also handed him a manila folder. "And a new case."

"You're mean when you're ugly." House took the annoying square of note-pad. "But at least you're not ugly all the time."

On his office floor, Cuddy left him and Hadley entered. "Where are you going?" House asked. It was starting time. His starting time. Her starting time and the rest of his team's starting time had come and gone hours ago.

"Breakfast."

House twirled his cane one-eighty, hooking the curved end around Hadley's upper arm. "Actually it's lunch time, which you're skipping today." He thrust the folder into her hands without reading it. "Get to work."

Hadley sighed, following her eccentric and often cantankerous boss through the double glass doors of the conference room where the other three members of the team already were, nursing mid-day beverages.

House by-passed the outer-office altogether.

"Aren't you going to join the differential today?" Taub asked in his of-late sour tone.

"As soon as I fumigate my office of lawyer." House continued into his office, barely glancing at the attorney seated in the visitor's chair. House moved to his own chair and eased himself down into it. The day was becoming less and less fun.

"You're a hard man to get a hold on."

"Or maybe a hold man to get hard on." House said, "But especially when I'm trying to ignore you."

Harcourt didn't try to work out the physician's meaning. "I'm here as a courtesy."

Anyone who ever began a conversation with that kind of lie was about to speak an unpleasant truth.

"Doctor Wilson has been officially cleared of any liability in Doctor Morgan's death."

House looked at the sober attorney. "Telling me what I already know is a waste of my time so I'm assuming there's something else?"

Sober law-man cleared his throat. "The autopsy has been completed. It was a very thorough autopsy, the family's attorney insisted on that."

"Of course they did."

"The autopsy findings, however, did produce some odd results of another type."

"What type?" House was now more interested than he was a moment before.

"I'm not at liberty to say but I thought, since you were a friend of Morgan's, you might be interested to know that you may be coming under investigation."

"Me? What the hell for?"

"Medical interference I can only presume."

"All I did was talk to him. That's not interference, that's concern."

"Yes, well, I imagine you'll be getting other visitors." Harcourt stood, reached into his suit pocket and left a business card on House's desk. "I'm no longer on Doctor Wilson's payroll. My, er, _fees_ are reasonable."

-

-

-

The next day, House's office visitors were not nearly so congenial.

House rested his painful leg on the automan. It was mid-afternoon; the time of day where the pain in his bothersome thigh would plunge from ache into agony.

The two plain clothed policeman didn't notice. "We need to ask you a few questions, Doctor House. We'd like you to come down-town."

House sighed. Ever since Tritter, he suddenly found himself itchy at the official and insincere ring in the voice of any authority. "Can't we just do this here and you go away? Better yet, can't you just go away?"

Neither man flinched or even cracked a lip to show he had any teeth. House pushed himself to his feet. The taller and younger of the two detective's handed House his overcoat. Cuddy appeared in the doorway with, House was grateful to see, Harcourt.

"I called him as soon as they called me." She explained to House. "I told him it was an emergency." Cuddy nodded her head at Harcourt. "Send your first bill to me." She looked at House with decade-long endurance. "And the rest can go to House."

-

-

At the police station, House was fed luke-warm coffee of questionable age. He powder-creamed it up to bring it closer to palatable and popped a Vicodin.

A man House had never seen entered the drab room with its all-too-obvious, straight from the movies one-way mirror and single table with the ram-rod straight chairs.

The brown suited policeman seated himself opposite House. The bulk of the bald, thick-set man was above his hips and despite being only, House estimated, five-foot-seven, he sat as tall as a giant.

"I'm Detective Lowitz."

A member of the Wilson club, House realized. Jews love to argue.

Lowitz tucked an gaudy orange tie out of the way inside his suit jacket and opened a folder that was obviously far too thick to be the beginning of an investigation into anything. _Probably plumped up with scrap to make it appear like they're already way ahead of the game_. House decided to ignore the detective as far as possible and cooperate only so far as it brought him an apology and a quick dismissal.

"You're Doctor House?"

_Congratulations__ asshole, you can read_. "Which you already know."

Lowitz did not look up from the papers under his nose. "Doctor Hetchfield has provided statements that you visited Doctor Morgan when he was in the Emergency room at Chicago Medical Center." This detective suddenly reminded him of a humorless high school principal he had once had, only fatter and meaner looking. "Where you claimed to be Morgan's friend."

"Not "claimed to", _was_."

Lowitz looked at House as though he knew a liar when he saw one. "The family states they've never seen you with Morgan prior to the convention-"

"-they weren't at the convention." House said succinctly. "They didn't attend medical school or residency, I doubt they followed Terrance on his rounds all day, and they don't have a tap on my phone so actually they would have no idea if I knew him or not. I haven't met most of the James Wilson tribe either."

"Wilson? The oncologist?"

"Yeah. The _other_ doctor you were wrong about."

Ignoring the quip, "And you don't think it's unusual for a man to have a close friend like that and never meet the family? You're telling me you've _never_ met the family of Terrance Morgan before now? Of a _friend_?"

"Ask around."

"Don't you think that's weird?"

"Not as weird as that tie."

Lowitz ignored the insult. "The results of Morgan's second autopsy provided some interesting conclusions."

"Enteral scarring."

Lowitz cleared his throat. "Yes. It appears, at least to the medical examiner, that your diagnosis was essentially correct. According to him, only the rash cannot be explained."

For the first time, House felt nervous. "What rash?"

"Morgan had a rash. It was ignored during the first autopsy, believed by the attending to be the result of fever."

"He's probably right."

"Only, it was localized in a very odd area."

"What area?"

"His chest." Lowitz quoted the details verbatim. "A mediastinal rash was observed, though this was previously recorded as a result of fever. It is the opinion of this department that the rash is idiopathic. An iatrogenic reaction is considered a possibility though no epinephrine or epinephrine/lidocaine, corticosteriods, or any sulfa drugs had been administered at any time during Doctor Morgan's treatment."

"What does any of this have to do with me?"

Lowitz folded his hands on the table. "Iatrogenic, if I understand my medical jargon, means medically caused."

"I wasn't his attending. So it wasn't _House_-caused, if that's what you're getting at." House pointed out. "And Idiopathic -- and I _do_ understand medical jargon -- means the attending and the medical examiner don't know _why_ Morgan had a rash. So again, what does any of this have to do with me?"

"You were the last person to see Morgan alive."

House's lawyer, who until now had remained quiet, leaned closer and spoke into his client's ear. House listened then shook his head. "How is not answering going to make my "case" stronger?" He asked Harcourt. "And what _case_?There is no case, there's just another idiot cop."

Harcourt sighed as his recalcitrant client kept talking. "Right." House said to Lowitz. "Morgan's dead and the family wants someone, other than Morgan, to be at fault so they don't lose an extra cool half million. I get it. Tell them they're wrong. Tell them Morgan's attending was an idiot. Tell yourself while you're at it. And tell Morgan's idiot widow she should have made her husband stick to his diet."

House sat back, flushed but finished.

Harcourt addressed Lowitz. "Unless you intend to press charges...?"

Lowitz looked down at the table. To House's frustration, the man appeared mildly amused. Unflappable. "No. Not at this time. He's free to go."

-

-

-

House pressed himself against Wilson's hardening cock, wriggling his own hips in between Wilson's slightly spread thighs.

Funny. He wasn't in the mood for sex, but he was in the mood for this. Being close to Wilson, crawling down into his flesh and covering himself over in him. Just like for years. Just like always only now it wasn't only metaphorical.

"What did the police want?"

House didn't want to talk about it. He wanted Wilson to slake himself in his scarred body. He wanted Wilson to use him for his own release, he wanted surrender and gasping satisfaction for Wilson. For himself, he wanted silence. "Nothing." He kissed Wilson's chest. His heart hammered at the question. _Do they really think I killed Morgan? _"Just tying up loose ends."

"You were at the hospital that day."

"Yes. But he died anyway. Now shut-up." House slid down Wilson's body and took his penis in his mouth, intending to give him a blow job the likes of which Wilson would never forget. Something to wash away uncertainty or questions. To keep the only connection he wanted with anyone sparking between crazy distance. Driving through both of them down the life line to the cold grave.

The tight fear that had for hours been building up in his chest was finally unraveling and letting him have back the illusion that all was well in his life.

Though he was a realist enough to know otherwise.

But House wanted a few hours to not think of any disturbance. It had been so long, so very long since he had felt contentment or peace.

Now, he did and all because of Wilson forgiving him. Coming back and taking him in again.

House had woken up in that rental car, saw Wilson sitting next to him and damned near cried with relief. Not a flicker had betrayed his heart to those brown eyes, however. Things were still too perched on the edge of disaster to risk that.

Wilson was back in his life and now in his bed. Fleeting things, still. If House had soundly discovered anything in life, it was that happiness seemed to exist on its own terms and solely for itself. Nothing he did, or had done, had coaxed it to hang around for more than a few years.

So he had learned to expect nothing greater than moments here and there, snatched when they presented themselves within reach.

Came a moment only short weeks ago and he had snatched at Wilson's body as he grabbed at his heart. And House planned to milk the various moments with every twist of his body and moan from his lips. He could die after one or the next a content man.

Now, though, was _this_ moment. Each came on its own without fanfare and he made careful to only want the one; the present -- not much to ask he didn't think. House planned to work this one into a sweat of affection and have Wilson so spent, so utterly empty yet plump with his lover's hands and mouth that the younger man would never want anything else in the world again but his older, alcoholic, crippled, narcotic-addicted jerk of a lover.

Maybe happiness kept its distance for a reason.

House had made this substitute. That's all he had wanted that night, a facsimile at least, when he kissed Wilson for the first and not only time. Just some pseudo-almost-but-not-quite-there feeling of joy. He desperately wished he had at least that much coming.

In answer to House's unspoken wish, Wilson tangled his fingers in House's graying curls. "Oh, yeah. Suck my cock, baby. I fucking love you so_ much_."

XXX

Part VI ASAP.


	6. Chapter 6

Fairy God Doctor

Part VI

By GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House attend a medical conference. One of them gets into some unexpected and serious trouble and the other must come to the rescue in an unexpected way.

Rating: ADULT. SLASH. NC-17, M. Mature.

Pairing: House/Wilson

Disclaimer: I don't own Gregory House, dang-nabit!

I have done some reading with court proceedings, etc but have taken some liberties with the way things might be done. Any oddities are mine.

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"Are you going to listen to what I say this time? 'Cause if all you insist on doing is verbally hanging yourself, you can do that with or without my expensive time."

"What do you care? You're getting paid."

"I have a reputation and a career I'd like to preserve. Are you going to listen to me or not? If so, be at my office at five."

House assured his lawyer he'd be there and snapped his cellular shut. _Damn!_

"Who was that?" Wilson called from the bathroom.

House turned the cellular off and dropped it in his coat pocket. "Taub." He took up his cane and limped to the door.

But he was too slow for Wilson's annoyingly early to bed and early to rise code. House had slipped out of bed a full hour before Wilson's usual alarm bell and still the man had managed to catch up to him. House cursed the twenty minutes of massage his leg had demanded of him earlier. "They want bagels."

Wilson walked to the front door with a toothbrush between his lips, talking between nice, even motions of the brush. "And you're actually _getting_ them? Who are you and what have you done with my boyfriend?"

House stepped through the door but not before Wilson planted a minty kiss on the corner of his lips.

-

-

-

"There will probably be a hearing, Doctor House."

"Fine. They can all hear how I had nothing to do with Morgan's death. That was all him."

"The process of getting this controversy to court is already underway." Harcourt sighed and consulted his yellow pad that lay before him. "Doctor Hetchfield has submitted a deposition to the court to the effect that, as far as he and the attending staff know, you were the last person to see Morgan alive before he took a rapid turn for the worst. The family of Doctor Morgan likewise stated in no uncertain terms that they have no knowledge of your friendship with him or that you ever even met Doctor Morgan."

Harcourt cleared his throat. "There is also the mitigating factor of your very close personal -- er -- relationship with Doctor Wilson."

"I sleep with him, therefore I _kill_ for him?"

"Are you? It certainly does not look good for you. Or him. People might say you would do anything to help Doctor Wilson."

"_People_ are idiots."

"Have you--?"

"--Committed murder so I can keep squatting on my best friends nest? _No!_ How much more am I going to have to fork over before you'll believe me?"

"From my end innocence is always, well, assumed." Harcourt drummed his thick fingers on the rich mahogany. "And then we have the mystery rash."

"I can have a half dozen endocrinologists and twice that many immunologists in here this afternoon who can give you any one of triple that many reasons for a rash on a man with a low grade infection pumped full of antibiotics, an iatrogenic fever and maybe even an incompetent clerk who missed writing up an allergy. For all the so-called mystery behind it, the rash may as well be a pimple."

"What's _your_ diagnosis?"

"As I have been continually reminded, I was not his attending."

"Yet you seemed to have taken a keen medical interest in a man you didn't know--"

"--I did know him!"

"Beyond reputation, I mean." Harcourt was utterly unfazed and, with his pursed lips as evidence, unconvinced. "He was already being cared for in the ICU of a prestigious hospital."

"I'm pretty sure I hired you to be _my_ lawyer."

"You can see, though, why you need one?" Harcourt pointed out. "If you can't even convince me, then what chance do you think the judge will believe you, assuming this goes all the way to court?"

House tapped his cane on the carpet. Harcourt was right of course, but that didn't mean he couldn't be annoyed about it. "What are you suggesting then?"

"At the very least, you might start by telling me the truth."

"Truth isn't usually the purview of a defense attorney."

"True. But then we have to convince a room full of people otherwise, don't we?" Harcourt sat back and folded his hands. "_Did_ you know Doctor Morgan?"

House looked away to the sunshine filtering through the wide windows. Harcourt's tenth floor office smugly said that he was high priced but worth every penny. House looked at his lawyer, then his cane. He shook his head.

Harcourt merely nodded, House's confession clearly supporting the very facts the attorney had suspected all along. "So why did you go to the hospital that day?"

House cursed all lawyers and the snakes they rode in on. "Because Harcourt was planning on suing Wilson for saving his life." Quietly, "Wilson did not do anything wrong and for that Morgan and his brood were going to take him down."

"Speculation." Harcourt searched his client's face, looking for truths and lies. The two always arrived together. "What happened while you were in the room with him?"

"I figured he'd be awake when I arrived. He wasn't."

"And?"

"And I might have muttered something about him ruining a good man's practice."

"That's all?"

"And maybe that I wasn't going to let that happen."

"Very stupid. People listen at doors all the time, you know."

House had to agree. Everything Harcourt had said to him so far reflected his own cynical view of humanity.

"But no threats?" Harcourt asked. "You didn't touch him? Jostle the bed? Maybe slip him somethi--?"

"--Of course not."

Harcourt waited and when nothing further was forthcoming, he nodded. If there was anything more that his client was not saying, he would get it out of him in time. "Did you touch anything in the room, say, other than the bed railing?"

"What difference does that make?"

"Maybe none. Maybe all the difference. Did you?"

House honestly couldn't remember. "No."

"Okay."

"So that's it?"

"For now. I'll let you know when the hearing date is set. In the meantime, try to come up with some very good justifications for why you went to the hospital that day -- other than to threaten a man you didn't know, not to mention why you lied to the attending to get in."

At House's frown, Harcourt added. "My prosecuting colleague isn't an idiot either."

-

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-

"I need your help."

Cameron left off her verbal instructions to the Charge nurse who scurried away to carry them out and turned to House. "When's the Hearing?"

She saw she had caught him off guard for only a second by his out-of-character pause. He quickly recovered. "Wilson's been running his big mouth."

"I heard a rumor about your most recent run-in with the law. Everybody has heard."

"I'm delighted. And, by the way, the law ran into _me_. I haven't done anything."

"I'm sure." Cameron crossed her arms, the sight of a fidgeting House butt-deep in trouble was almost endearing. "I'm assuming you already have a lawyer -- what do you need from me?"

With one hand on her forearm, House steered her to one side of the bustling emergency center. "I need an allergist to convince those idiots why a dying man on broad- spectrum antibiotics has a fever and a rash."

Cameron sensed an approaching, drawn-out headache of trouble. "You know all the possible reasons."

"They think I'm a liar."

Cameron couldn't help herself. "Hah. Wonder why _that_ came up? So they think you'll lie? Instead you want me to lie to them for you."

House stared at her with that way she used to know so well, and sometimes missed, an impatient exasperation when someone didn't believe his web of deceit with foolhardy wide-eyed trust. House was a man you missed for all the wrong reasons and that was one of the most frustrating things about him.

"_No-o-o_, I want you to tell them the truth. There's a dozen reasons for a rash on this guy; other than me somehow murdering him with my good looks."

"Did you?"

Now House almost looked hurt and Cameron almost regretted asking the question.

"Why does everyone suddenly think I'm Al Capone? I didn't kill him or slip a severed horse head under his blanket. I didn't touch him at all."

"Fine."

House was about taken aback at her quick agreement. "Fine?"

"Yes. Fine. Let me know when I need to appear."

-

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-

Wilson sat at the back of the courtroom giving the appearance of a man who wished he could be anywhere else, but for his friend who had no choice but to be there.

House sat at the front of the courtroom next to his, and formerly Wilson's, lawyer wondering how he'd managed to find himself back in such a place without hardly trying.

The prosecuting counsel was reeking arrogance and speaking to Doctor Hetchfield. "So Doctor House told you outright that he was a close personal friend of Doctor Morgan?"

"Yes. He said he was, unofficially, Morgan's attending while at the convention."

"But now you believe that House did not know Morgan at all?"

"Objection." House's lawyer stood. "What Doctor Hetchfield now _believes_ isn't relevant. Prior to that day, Doctor House was a stranger to Doctor Hetchfield. Naturally if he came to believe something of Doctor House, it was certainly information he was exposed to _after_ the fact."

The very fat judge nodded his shock of white hair. "Sustained." He addressed the first lawyer. "Keep your questions specific to facts, Mister DeLouise."

While nodding politely at the judge, DeLouise cleared his throat at what he clearly considered a rude interruption. "Doctor House made inquiries after Doctor Morgan's health -- his health, yes?"

"Yes. Doctor House asked about Morgan's prognosis and said he was a close friend."

To the Court Transcriber, DeLouise intoned as he were not in fact, the prosecuting attorney but the judge, "Let it be noted for the record that there is no evidence to support this claim of Doctor House that he and Morgan were close friends. The family of Doctor Morgan is adamant in insisting that Doctor House not only was not a friend of Morgan's, he hadn't even met the man personally prior to the convention."

"I think you've made your point on that already, Mister DeLouise." The judge said to bring the lawyer back down to size. Judge McKenzie then addressed Harcourt. "Do you have any cross, Mister Harcourt?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

House sighed with relief. Thus far Harcourt had been awfully quiet.

Harcourt walked to the witness bench and pleasantly addressed Hetchfield. "What about professionally?"

"Excuse me?" Hetchfield asked.

"Could have Doctors Morgan and House been acquainted _professionally_ prior to that day in your department?"

"I suppose so."

"It _is_ so, wouldn't you agree, Doctor Hetchfield? It _is_ possible."

"Yes, it's possible."

"Did Doctor House make any requests of you? Professional requests?"

DeLouise stood. "Your Honor--"

House groaned.

"--that the medical records of Doctor Morgan were made available to Dcotr House has already been established. Why do we need to go into it further?"

The judge regarded Harcourt to provide the answer.

"This calls to my clients motivations at the time. I can only assume I am allowed to properly establish Doctor House's character for the Court?"

The judge nodded. "I'd like to hear this as well, Mister DeLouise. Please sit down."

Harcourt allowed himself a microscopic smirk and addressed Hetchfield with his eyebrows raised in question. "Well?"

Hetchfield nodded. "Yes, I've already testified Doctor House asked for copies of Morgan's health records to be sent to him."

Harcourt scratched his cheek, frowning, as if in deep thought. House was thankful his lawyer seemed to be a adequate thespian. "Isn't that a breach of the Health Information Act? I believe health records are strictly confidential. Did you _really_ send copies of confidential medical records to another Doctor? To Doctor House? A physician, if we are to believe the plaintiffs, who had no business to them?"

Hetchfield looked a bit uncomfortable. "It was a professional courtesy."

Harcourt knew better. "That's all? You decided to play nice and break the law?"

Hetchfield scowled. "Of course not. Morgan gave his consent."

Harcourt's eyebrows climbed his forehead in surprise. "Really? Doctor Morgan gave his consent? His written consent?"

"Well, yes. He awoke once or twice and was lucid enough to understand that Doctor House was interested in his case and wished to assist in his diagnosis."

"So Morgan, obviously recognizing the name of Doctor House, wished for his assistance? He said yes. Was Doctor Morgan reluctant in anyway?"

Hetchfield shook his head. "No. He seemed pleased. I assumed Morgan knew of Doctor House's reputation."

"His reputation as a brilliant Diagnostician?"

"Yes."

"Did Morgan indicate to you in any manner, that he didn't want Doctor House's help; that he was mistrustful or even hated Doctor House?"

"No, well, I don't know whether Morgan _hated_ him or not."

"Rather would you agree that Morgan gave the appearance of a man who trusted Doctor House's advice?"

"It seemed so."

"I put to you, Doctor Hetchfield, that Morgan knew Doctor House well enough to veritably put his own life in his hands."

"Perhaps."

DeLouise stood again, a hint of weariness in his voice. "Objection. Mister Harcourt knows well enough not to ask a witness for speculation or conclusions."

Harcourt waved his hand at the judge as an apology. "Withdrawn, Your Honor." He turned and addressed the small room in general, looking now and again at DeLouise directly. "But it's odd, isn't it? Morgan readily agrees to allow Doctor House access to his medical records - agrees in fact - to House's assistance in his diagnosis and recommendation for care. Seems to me that these two men were hardly strangers." Harcourt turned to Hetchfield. "Does it seem that way to you, Doctor Hetchfield?"

Hetchfield looked very like a man trapped by his own truthfulness. "I guess it's possible they knew one another."

"It _is_ possible, isn't it? It is, based upon Morgan's ready agreement, that at the very least, Morgan knew Doctor House well enough to trust him. Hardly seems the actions expected between two complete strangers, wouldn't you say, Doctor Hetchfield?"

"I suppose."

House hoped that Harcourt was worth that penthouse office.

"Objection." DeLouise stood and addressed the judge. "Your Honor, it is hardly necessary to continue this line of questioning, is it?"

Judge McKenzie gave DeLouise a scowl and the same to Harcourt. "I'm inclined to agree. The question here is less did these men know each other, Mister Harcourt, than is there sufficient evidence to suspect Doctor House of harming Doctor Morgan and if _that_ is determined, whether it is enough evidence to go to court. I would strongly advise you to remember that. This goes for you as well, Mister DeLouise. _Move on."_

"Certainly. Withdrawn, Your Honor." Harcourt smiled pleasantly. "No further questions at this time."

House leaned over and whispered angrily. "Why the hell aren't you questioning the so-called physical evidence? What the hell good is this crap doing me?"

Harcourt whispered harshly into his troublesome client's ear. "DeLouise knows there is almost no physical evidence. That's why he's attacking your character first and thank god for small favors. It means we can use that same time to dismantle his attack and build up our own image of you for the judge as a nice, upstanding doctor and citizen and, if you'll excuse my bluntness, I have my work cut out for me."

"You know what they say about catfish and lawyers?"

Sighing, "I'm sure I've heard this one."

"One's a bottom-feeding, scum sucker, and the other one's a _fish."_

Harcourt swore at his client under his breath. "Shut-up."

House leaned back in his seat and tried to bring his attention around to what the young physician was saying about him on the witness stand. He wondered if he might find a way to "accidentally" trip the young doctor with his cane later in the day without it bringing any more negative light on himself. He decided it wasn't worth the risk, but the fantasy still felt good.

DeLouise stood and approached the witness stand with the intent of easing the negative opinions of his client that had just been generated. "Doctor Hetchfield. Had _you_ heard of Doctor House prior to his introducing himself to you that day in your department?"

"Yes. I had read an article by him several years ago and knew of him by reputation."

"But you're not friends? Just because you recognize Doctor House as a top notch physician and might even welcome his assistance if you were ill, that wouldn't make him your friend, would it?"

"Well, no."

"In fact, it wouldn't even make you casual acquaintances, would it?"

"No," Hetchfield appeared more collected. "It wouldn't."

"Tell me, Doctor Hetchfield, did Doctor House _pretend_ to be an attending physician of your Emergency Department in order to gain entry_ into_ that Emergency Department?"

"Yes. He even put on a Doctor's jacket to blend in."

"In your opinion, just your _personal_ opinion, are those the actions of a truthful man?"

"No."

"Thank you, Doctor Hetchfield."

Judge McKenzie nodded to Harcourt. "Anything more?"

Harcourt stood. "Just one more question, Your honor. Doctor Hetchfield, isn't it possible that Doctor House was so concerned with his friend, Doctor Morgan, that he did this action out of concern?"

"I think that's a stretch."

"Though it is _possible_? Without your _personal pre-knowledge_ of Doctor House, is it _possible_ he was merely worried enough about his friend to take this rather foolish action?"

"I suppose it's possible. A little bizarre I think."

"But possible?"

"Yes. Certainly."

McKenzie dismissed Hetchfield and Harcourt returned to his seat.

-

-

-

The Hearing was postponed until after lunch and House joined Wilson at a small cafe half a street down.

"I'm testifying tomorrow." Wilson said as House seated himself in front of a Montreal Roast beef sandwich and fries.

"I know."

"Harcourt wants to see me tonight. _Clarification _he said."

House knew that too. He swallowed with effort. "He wants to know about you and me. Our new love-in situation."

Wilson face had blushed to his starched collar then quickly blanched with worry. A look on him House didn't like seeing.

Wilson did not do well with stress. House speculated it was one of the reasons Wilson went into Oncology to begin with. The professional stress of oncology (other than daily dealing with the emotions of his clients. An occupation House wouldn't willingly touch with a ten foot tongue depressor), was limited to basically two arenas. One -- every patient expected that their cancer would eventually kill them. Even the word evoked a special kind of terror in their hearts. So if they did die, the doctor almost never gets any blame. Two -- if the patient actually survives, it's chocked up to the wonderful work of their equally wonderful doctor.

With oncology, you couldn't lose.

House kept his worry to himself. "I'm sick of this. On you the rope broke, and now they're trying to hang me."

Wilson nibbled his salad without enthusiasm. "This is mostly about half a million dollars. Money talks louder than my neck or yours."

"Hm. Where's all your usual sunshine and roses encouragement?"

"I left them in the car. No social contract, remember? It's healthier."

But less comforting. House felt a little let down. As annoying as Wilson's platitudes of hope usually were, he presently felt the need for a pep talk.

He watched Wilson eat. A little de-stressing sex would be nice too, if they didn't have to show up for McKenzie at one o'clock. He remembered with a pang of disappointment that Wilson usually couldn't perform when he was stressed. And the few sheet tumbles they'd managed these last few weeks, had been a little robotic on his partner's part. House sighed and bit into his sandwich.

It was too dry.

-

-

-

And the end of another afternoon of circling like vultures, McKenzie dismissed the court and Harcourt walked to the parking lot with his client and his former-client in tow. "I need Wilson to speak as a character witness." Harcourt informed the two of them. "Tomorrow at nine o'clock, Judge McKenzie is going to hear all about your very loving, honest, open relationship."

House felt sick to his stomach and Wilson squirmed in his seat like the elastic on his Walmart underwear had snapped. "Is that really necessary?" Wilson asked. "Everyone already knows we're . . ._together." _

"And we have to give a public show about that. If it looks like we're trying to hide anything, that will only add to the suspicion that there _is_ something to hide."

"That's retarded!" House barked. "My sex-life is not on trial. There's no jury to convince."

"We have a Judge to convince. Unless you'd rather wait until this goes to trial?"

House looked away.

Wilson could feel the heat of anger wafting off him like a storm-front. "What kind of questions do you think DeLouise will ask?"

Harcourt considered. "He'll ask how long you've been together. How long you've known each other. Short of snooping where he legally can't, he'll try and dig up any dirt on either if you in the last five years." Harcourt shrugged. "He'll try to show that one or both of you are obsessed enough with each other to cause harm to another human being if either of you felt your partner was threatened."

"Really?" Wilson whispered. The knowledge that his sexual relationship with House being attacked publicly was bad enough, but the airing of everything else that had happened between them over the last five years would be enough to give anyone pause. Neither of them would appear particularly mentally sound beneath such scrutiny. House especially would come out looking like a nut. He was of course, but at least they knew he was a harmless nut. Mostly.

House looked like he was about to jump out of his skin. "They have no right to snoop through my underwear."

Harcourt knew all this of course. "Just the same, we're going to let them. Sorry gentleman, but hiding anything is going to make you look guilty, Doctor House. And," he said to Wilson, "by association, you too."

-

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Part VII ASAP


	7. Chapter 7

Fairy God Doctor

Part VIIf

By GeeLadyf

Summary: Wilson and House attend a medical conference. One of them gets into some unexpected and serious trouble and the other must come to the rescue in an unexpected way.

Rating: ADULT. SLASH. NC-17, M. Mature.

Pairing: House/Wilson

Disclaimer: I don't own Gregory House, dang-nabit!

_**I have done some reading with Hearing and Court **__**proceedings**__**, but have taken some liberties with the way things might be done. Judge for yourselves. Any oddities are mine.**_

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"This is complete bullshit." House snarled aside to Wilson as they took their respective seats in McKenzie's courtroom.

"Don't worry." Was all Wilson could think to say as House brushed passed him to sit beside his lawyer. Wilson was nauseous. This all felt so miserably familiar. For the second time House's honesty and name was being called into question. Only this time, they had no solid basis for doing so. So House had gone to see Morgan and lied to get in to do it. So he had lied to Morgan's attending to get confidential medical records - hadn't Morgan consented? So House had all but whooped it up when Morgan died. Well, the man was as good as dead anyway, right? So House had been the last to see Morgan alive . . .

Wilson sober reflections were interrupted by Justice McKenzie who entered the courtroom as the bailiff barked at them all to stand.

The judge gathered his robes and seated himself, then perfunctorily, "You may sit down." He said. Clearing his throat, he spent a few seconds shuffling his papers before nodding to DeLouise. Morgan's grieving widow and an assortment of relations looked on. "This Hearing is reconvened. You may proceed, Mister DeLouise."

DeLouise called Wilson to the stand.

Wilson tried to relax and found it impossible. He tried to reassure himself by looking at House but House was scowling at DeLouise. Beyond House, near the back of the courtroom, sat Cameron and Foreman. Taub and Chase had been left in charge of Diagnostics for the duration of the Hearing. Wilson's heart sank. With Cameron there, if there were any staff at PPTH who did not know that he and House were in a relationship that stretched beyond friendship, there wouldn't be once she was done telling everyone about it. Sometimes he sympathized with House who had long held Cameron to be an insufferable busy body.

Wilson's attention was snapped back to DeLouise who was suddenly standing in front of him with a smile so painstakingly polite, it was very obviously fake.

"Doctor Wilson. You are the Department Head of Oncology at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital?"

Wilson forced his jaw to drop open. "Yes."

"And you have not only worked alongside Doctor House for several years, you have known each other for, what, ten, fifteen years?"

"Almost seventeen years now." Wilson wondered where the time had gone. Lots of it had been wasted in lousy marriages. Lots of it at House's apartment watching sports and drinking. Lately, watching sports, drinking and having the best, the most hedonistic sex of his life. Wilson glanced at House who, though paying attention, looked like his mind was elsewhere. He looked depressed.

"And the last six, seven months your friendship has taken a rather sharp turn into something more, has it not?"

Wilson decided to cut through all the lawyer tongue flapping crap. "We've been intimate for just over seven months."

"In a sexual relationship?"

"Yes."

"In love?"

Caught a little off guard by that, Wilson stuttered. "Well . . . I . . . yes, I think so_. I _am."

"So his welfare is of great concern to you?"

"Of course."

"And would you suppose he feels the same way?"

"You'll have to ask him but yes, I think he cares about me."

Wilson felt House's eyes on him, staring like the eyes of a Siamese cat. House did not look away or blink and the intensity of his stare was both comforting and a little disconcerting.

"Does he care enough to kill for you?"

Harcourt stood quickly, sighing over DeLouise's obvious attempt to put one over. "Your Honor - objection."

Harcourt's voice appealed to the good sense of McKenzie who nodded vigorously and said to DeLouise. "Objection upheld. Mister DeLouise, one more attempt like that on my patience and I will rule summarily."

"My sincere apologies, Your Honor. Withdrawn."

DeLouise seemed to gather his thought for a few seconds and Wilson tensed. _He won't bring up -- _

"In your opinion, is Doctor House a careful physician?" DeLouise asked, again with that pleasant smile.

Wilson had no idea how to answer. "House is a very skilled Diagnostician. He saves almost every patient sent to him."

"Almost?"

Wilson let a little of his own irritation show through now. "None of us win them all."

"No. But, would you say that Doctor House puts the safety of his patient ahead of himself, or say, a colleague?"

_Oh, this isn't palpably manipulative at all_. "I'm not sure I understand you. Safety? The safety, the well being of a patient is always a priority, but sometimes in order to get well, there are treatments -- for example in my specialty -- chemical therapy, commonly called chemo-therapy, can be very uncomfortable and often poses certain risks, but the risks of _no_ treatment . . ." Wilson let the idea play across the minds of the onlookers. "In medicine there are almost always risks, Mister DeLouise."

"Acceptable risks." DeLouise tweaked. "But what if a risk is not justified?"

"I'm not sure I understand what you're asking me. The patient has the final say. The patient makes the decision as to what treatment to accept or reject."

Harcourt stood and addressed McKenzie. "Where is all this going, Your Honor?"

McKenzie, chin in hand, answered. "Yes, I'd like to know that too."

DeLouise strolled over to his client, the widowed Misses Morgan, and waved a sympathetic hand in her direction. "Your Honor. My colleague, Mister Harcourt, and I, and you, recognize that the criminal circumstances surrounding Doctor Morgan's death at this time are merely suspect. In order to make a determination as to whether Doctor Morgan died of natural causes or was "hurried along" -- shall we say? -- falls to the characters of those involved. Those closest to him, or those _claiming_ to have been closest. Really, it falls to a determination of the person and his or her motives."

DeLouise waved a hand at House now. "If, and I say IF, Doctor House is culpable in the death of Terrance Morgan, motive and opportunity are our watchwords."

"This is not a trial, Mister DeLouise." McKenzie reminded him.

"Certainly, Your Honor, but in order to weigh the evidence for trial, am I not allowed to present to you the prosecutions' theories? As we are all aware, what evidence there is, we will be examining in due time. As for now . . ."

McKenzie pursed his lips. "Mister Harcourt, I hope you have prepared your client sufficiently."

Harcourt half stood as an affirmation . "I have Your Honor." Under his breath to House, "What the hell call does he have in saying _that_?"

House leaned over. "What do you mean?"

"That last remark. It's like he's insinuating DeLouise's case is stronger than ours before he hears all the testimony."

House didn't like the sound of that.

DeLouise continued his gentle interrogation of Wilson. "But surely the physician has some influence, Doctor Wilson? Don't tell me you've never urged a treatment on a patient who did not want it?"

Wilson decided to try and shut this line of circular logic down. "When a sick person comes to a doctor, there are certain expectancies on both sides. The patient expects to get well, the Doctor expects the patient to agree to do what might be required, even with risks, to get well. The decision is usually arrived at mutually; the combination of the patient wishing to be cured and the doctor's recommendation of treatment based on his knowledge and experience for that cure." Wilson took a breath. "But if you're asking me is it cut and dried? If you're asking me, do my patients always accept the treatments I recommend? No. Sometimes they refuse, and then sometimes they die."

"But not always?"

"Of course not always. Medicine isn't swapping out the spark plugs and an oil change - the human body is unpredictable. The response of each person physically is unpredictable, but not so unpredictable that the commonly accepted and sometimes risky treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's or any other recognizable disease are more risky than leaving the disease alone to rage unstopped."

Harcourt stood and whined, "Your Honor . . ." House smiled. He sounded like a parent pushed to the limits of his patience.

McKenzie had lost his patience as well. "Cut to the chase, Mister DeLouise. Put a pertinent question to this witness or dismiss him."

DeLouise glanced over at House who scowled back without blinking. "Doctor Wilson, have you ever witnessed Doctor House put his patient's well being at risk to effect a questionable cure?"

Harcourt heaved an explosive sigh and stood, facing DeLouise "Define the parameters of the risk and _questionable_?!" He barked, then looked to the judge to do his duty.

"Withdrawn, Your Honor." DeLouise waved his hand and the judge waved Harcourt back to his seat.

House leaned into Harcourt. "I'm guessing that was somehow bad for me?"

Harcourt shushed him.

Judge McKenzie called Harcourt to question Wilson.

Harcourt approached and smiled reasuringly, but though his was almost as fake - put on for the whole court-room, at least it was honest. "To your knowledge, how many cases has Doctor House handled in the years he's been practicing as a Diagnostician for Plainsboro Hospital?"

Wilson had to do a quick mental calculation. "Well, hard to pin it down to an exact number, but I'd say, perhaps, five to six hundred patients over ten years. That's not including consults or the ten years of practicing medicine he put in prior to becoming head of the Diagnostics Department."

"Is five or six hundred in ten years a lot, Doctor Wilson?"

Wilson had no idea where Harcourt was going with it, but he answered truthfully. "No, not like Oncology --"

"What is Doctor House's cure rate?"

"Um. I think he's lost three or four that were directly under his care, five if you include one patient who died under the the care of one of his interns."

"So less than one percent loss of life."

"Yes."

"What sorts of illnesses does Doctor House treat?'

Now was Wilson's chance to polish House up like a shiny, new dime. "The incurable. The untreatable. People are sent to him when everyone else has failed to diagnose them. House is kind of a last chance saloon, and I mean that in a good way. His reputation as a brilliant diagnostician is well-known. He gets hundreds of resumes every year from hopefuls wanting to come work for him and learn from him."

Harcourt nodded as though hearing the statistics for the first time. "Impressive." He coughed and with his hands in his pocket, strolled to stand between House and the witness bench where Wilson sat, placing himself between the two men as though to announce to the judge and to the on-lookers that he felt completely at ease with his clients; that they were completely trustworthy and upstanding citizens who had devoted their lives to helping people and wouldn't hurt a mouse in the flour bag on their worst day. "Have you ever witnessed or know of any situation, where Doctor House was risking his patient _un_acceptably; where the recommended treatment was foolhardy; which treatment would surely kill rather than cure his patient?"

Wilson made certain not to hesitate. Had House made mistakes? Absolutely. No doctor didn't. Had he, at times, used less than stellar judgment in the application of that treatment? Yes. Had House set out to experiment on a patient to the exclusion of all good sense or to gain his personal agenda and nothing else?

In his mind, Wilson paused. Maybe just once or twice. When he was ill, detoxing or crazed from pain. Wilson decided not to divulge that particular tidbit of his opinion. He and Cuddy, and to some extent, House's own team, were the in-place safeguards that kept House grounded and functioning enough, that House could rattle his brilliance beads, wave his voo-doo cane and send his patients away healthy or at least more alive for longer than before. House was the genius monster. He and Cuddy were Doctor Frankenstein.

"Never." Wilson said. "House isn't a man who subscribes to touchy-feely medicine. He doesn't like people much, he doesn't mince words or lie to his patients about their chances. But he does cure. He does make them better. He's the finest physician I have ever known."

Harcourt stood in front of House and indicated the crippled, tired doctor (Wilson wondered if he'd coached House on that particular exhausted looking slump as a sympathy ploy), and asked "Doctor Wilson, would you put your self in Doctor House's hands if your life was at stake; if you had run out of options?"

Wilson looked over at his friend. House wasn't only his pal, he was his lover too and Wilson knew that in the next day or so more of that private aspect of their relationship was going to be shaken loose and sifted through in the sordid light of day and eager ears.

But at that moment he didn't care. Thinking back through eighteen years; the personal tragedies, the break-ups and pain, the laughs, the drinking bouts, even the bitter words between them -- even House's careless, ill-regard for himself, Wilson suddenly felt _proud_ to love House.

As friends and lovers, theirs was a devoted, calloused, histrionic, emotional upheaval of a relationship. But that kind of layered knowledge they possessed about each other; the frustrating, disagreeableness of House and the gentle, needing, passion of him, had become the marrow of his life. House the brain, House the addict, House the cripple, House the suffering, House the sexy, eager lover who would do almost anything for him (even let a probe be stuck deep into his brain to try and help a friend when the only reward for him was the risk of death or worse), was _his._ This amazing man, House, belonged to him. And he was House's.

Sometimes, like now, Wilson felt almost _humbled_ to have House in love with him. Choked up but answering quickly to stifle any show of emotion, which would embarrass House, Wilson answered. "I'll go you one better than that, Mister Harcourt. House wouldn't be my last option, he'd be my _first_."

Harcourt paused for some dramatic effect. Then, "_Thank_ you, Doctor Wilson." As though Wilson had just made everything, House's innocence and good-citizenship, perfectly clear for them all, DeLouise included.

"Your witness, Mister DeLouise?" McKenzie said.

Wilson took a deep breath and tried to relax. DeLouise cleared his throat as though he had just witnessed a good, but not quite convincing enough, theatrical event.

"Doctor Wilson, would you describe yourself as a competent Oncologist?"

"I think so."

"And how many patients for you in ten years? How many desperate people have come to you for your specialized kind of medicine?"

Wilson raised his eyes up as he looked for the numbers on the ceiling, a little caught off guard by the line of questioning. "In my nine years as head of the department, not including the clients I pass on to my intern, I'd have to say a ball park figure of nine, maybe ten thousand patients."

"No small number. And what percentage of those would you say were cured for, perhaps beyond five years? That is the standard numerical value for a "cure" where cancer is concerned, isn't it?"

"For certain types of cancer. It varies."

"I see. Well, out of ten thousand patients, how many would you say, based on any standard, ball-park numerical value you know off, did you cure?"

"Conservatively, perhaps eighty percent."

"Eighty percent? So twenty percent who, despite your efforts, don't make it. But that still leaves eight thousand people you have saved. That is no small number."

"I suppose that's true."

"And five-hundred and ninety-five that Doctor House has saved in the same stretch of time."

Wilson shifted uncomfortably. "Yes."

"You're no slouch yourself when it comes to saving lives are, you Doctor Wilson?"

Wilson had no idea how to respond to that and looked to Harcourt for a hint, a shrug or a wink of his eye to tell him what to do. Harcourt just shook his head.

"I suppose."

"Percentages aside, Doctor House saves lives, but I think we all agree that, seeing how many you yourself have saved in that time, what Doctor House does is a little less than the extraordinary feats of medicine you have ascribed."

"I would not agree. House saves those whom no one else can save."

"You have said that. Tell me, Doctor Wilson, do you personally know which other doctors these people visited prior to seeking out the services of Doctor House?"

"I'm not quite sure . . ?"

"Do you know which physicians these patients with supposedly no hope went to for help _prior _to coming to Doctor House? Was it two other physicians, three, four -- ten?"

"I, I'm not - I don't know. I guess they could have sought out other physicians first. I have no specific knowledge of House's patient's medical histories. One or two maybe."

"Or maybe none." DeLouise suggested cryptically. "Maybe they just went to two others, or even one, so when they reached Doctor House, the possibility that their illness was so mysterious than only the _great "_ -- DeLouise did little bunny-ear quotes in the air, "Doctor House could diagnose it is erroneous. Perhaps they weren't so sick as it seemed. Perhaps Doctor House got lucky in his diagnosis, or maybe the patients just got lucky?"

"That's ridiculous!"

"Oh? Doctor House is a fine upstanding citizen?"

"He's an excellent physician."

"_And_ a fine, upstanding citizen?"

"I told you - personally, he can be a jerk, but being a jerk and being a great doctor can go together."

"So Doctor House doesn't drink? He doesn't work under the influence of medication? He doesn't _take pills?" _

Of course he _did_. Pills that he was dependent on for pain relief. "He suffers chronic pain."

"So he _is_ on pills?"

"Yes."

"Pain pills? Vicodin?" DeLouise asked for the room's benefit.

"I already said yes. House is a pain _patient_. It affords him a unique and insightful kind of empathy for those patients of his who suffer." Wilson insisted, glad to score one over on DeLouise. Not that House utilized that unique insight much, but Wilson wasn't going to voice that part.

"Hmm. Still, a doctor functioning on pills all day, every day . . ." DeLouise let the unqualified statement hang in the air for a moment, like a stained shirt on the line, before sitting down.

Wilson was furious. "House is a great Doctor!" He shouted at DeLouise, suddenly sick of the whole pile of dirty laundry, ripe with insinuations. "You'd be_ lucky _to have him when _you _get sick."

"Doctor Wilson." McKenzie slapped his gavel on the bench top and, nausea supplanting energy, Wilson sat back, drained.

"You are dismissed, Doctor Wilson. No more outbursts like that in my courtroom or you will be found in contempt."

Wilson glanced wearily at the judge but he didn't feel one bit guilty about his loss of temper. "Yes, Your Honor."

Wilson returned to his seat behind and slightly to the right of House and his lawyer, but not before quietly remarking to DeLouise on his way by:

"You don't know him. House would never hurt anyone."

McKenzie caught the remark. "That's enough Doctor Wilson." And to the room - "I'm sick of this. This Hearing is in recess until Monday, nine am."

Once the judge left the room, Wilson breathed a sigh of relief while Harcourt said some final soothing words to his client. Wilson could easily see that House didn't buy them for a second.

House didn't say anything until they were in the car, driving home. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"For standing up for me."

"You are a great doctor."

"Not that part. For what you said to DeLouise, though a sucker punch between his eyes would have been nice too."

"But then I wouldn't be free to ravage you tonight."

"That _would_ be bad. However, conjugal visits."

Wilson maneuvered his sedan through Friday afternoon traffic. "How about Korean tonight?"

"Not hungry."

Wilson was a little disappointed. A not hungry House usually meant a House in more pain than usual and that almost always forestalled sex. "Need a massage?"

House shook his head. Looked like House was going to be inscrutable and Wilson grew even more depressed. "You have nothing to worry about, you know."

"Oh?"

"You can't be tried for something you didn't do."

"Are you kidding? This is America, the land of the free and the wrongly convicted."

"I just mean they don't have enough evidence."

"I agree."

"Because there is no evidence."

"Except for the stupid rash. Who would have thought?"

"Hmm?"

"I mean who would have thought trying to help you would be having my balls weighed in the balance."

"Right. Well, "Wilson pretended to consider it. "I can't hardly blame them, they're nice, bouncy ba--"

"-Shut-up."

Wilson leaned over and kissed House quickly on the lips. "Come on, let's see to that leg, and then we can turn our attention to more interesting parts."

"Pervert."

-

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-Part VIII ASAP


	8. Chapter 8

Fairy God Doctor

Part VIII

By GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House attend a medical conference. One of them gets into some unexpected and serious trouble and the other must come to the rescue in an unexpected way.

Rating: ADULT. SLASH. NC-17, M. Mature.

Pairing: House/Wilson

Disclaimer: I don't own Gregory House, dang-nabit!

_**I have done some reading with Hearing and Court **__**proceedings**__**, but have taken some liberties with the way things might be done. Judge for yourselves. Any oddities are mine.**_

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Wilson hated that DeLouise had called him to the stand first.

Having sex with House, while unquestionable complicating his life, had immeasurably improved it as well. But how to speak of something so abstract as love as undefined as theirs (because even he found it difficult to explain), but one so intricately, almost pathologically, passionate?

Wilson wished House had been called first, so he would have the more brilliant and quick-witted mind to cue from.

"We've spoken," DeLouise addressed himself to the judge, his opponent and room, "about the professional relationship between House and his staff and his colleagues in general. Our contention is to show convincing circumstance regarding the actions of Doctor House that might be seen to give him motive to wish Doctor Morgan dead. Direct evidence that he murdered a dying man may be forthcoming, but what motive, what reasons, might there be?"

DeLouise strolled easily up to Wilson in the witness stand and Wilson felt like socking him.

"You and Doctor House are in, . . .an intimate relationship? You are sexually involved?"

Wilson stared directly at DeLouise's pale blue irises, so much colder than the hot burn of House's. Those eyes that had rolled back in his head as the previous night Wilson had lain on top of him. Wilson's could still feel the warm flesh of him against his skin, their cocks rubbing together and House's moans of surrender . . .and how he had come with shudders and sighs of grateful pleasure.

Wilson shifted in his seat, the recollections becoming physical. "We're partners." Such a clinical word for living with a man who, with a single look from across the room, made his toes curl up and his heart heat and pound like a rutting buck's.

"And how long have you and Doctor House been together?"

"I've already answered this question."

"Just reiterate for us, please." DeLouise smiled.

"Not quite a year."

"Do you love him?"

Wilson hated DeLouise for asking it. It was a word House insisted Wilson never use in reference to him, citing Wilson's repeated failed relationships and proclivities to cheating whenever his partners - _"Whom you also claimed to love" _House had reminded him- began to lose their first emotional rush of luster that had drawn him in to begin with. Wilson had not bothered to argue the point, well versed in House's deep-seated psychological fears as to love and commitment. _His_, Wilson's fears, not his own.

House was adamant about it, too. _"You don't love, you rescue!"_

_"But, I feel it. And if I feel it, -for real - then, . . .you mean I'm not allowed to say it? Ever??" _

_"For the one and only time in our relationship - I'm going to say that I __**know**__ you love me, so from now on you don't have to say it. Just, for once in your life, DO it."_

_"Why can't I have both?"_

Wilson still felt the sting of House's anger when he had gone ahead and said it anyway, only to have House roughly shove him out of their bedroom and slam the door.

Wilson spent the night on the couch and it was only after a restless sleep that he realized he had spoke of love to make himself feel good, and not because House needed to hear it. House didn't need, didn't want or believe the word, in order to actually feel loved, and so House had requested he not say it.

That was weeks ago. Like an idiot he had listened to House's needs and promptly ignored them, dismissing his one request.

For House, words were marks on paper and puffs of air. Without words, action proved itself. But without action, words were deaf and mute.

Now DeLouise wanted him to speak the words as though simply saying it in front of all these strangers would prove it was so. What a joke a word could be. What a joke to ask for words to prove something so abstract, that it could not be explained by speech. He felt abashed, and a trifle irked, that House had been right once again. Words were inadequate. Words could be a cheat.

But, he had to speak. "I want to spend the rest of my life with him."

Wilson was careful not to watch House's reaction but in his peripheral vision, he could see House's head snap around to stare at him. "I love that he came into my life and I consider myself very lucky to have him. Greg House is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and if I lost him, I'm not sure I could stand it."

For some reason, DeLouise seemed very satisfied by Wilson's answer and Wilson felt a tiny twist of worry in his gut. What was the man looking so damn smug about?

"Thank you, Doctor Wilson."

Wilson blinked. That was it?

Apparently so, because DeLouise next called House to the stand and Wilson felt a sudden sickening wave of fear overcome him. Was DeLouise going to ask House the same question? How would House answer? Wilson sat down and tried to breath. But House had already once said that he loved him. In the hospital, that day when he had insanely induced a heart attack via large knife in electrical socket. But that was a whole different kind of love. That wasn't this. That wasn't now.

DeLouise began his venomous questions, following the same beaten path once more. "Doctor House, how close are you to Doctor Wilson?"

House didn't bat an eyelash. Dead-pan - "Depends on how sporting we both feel. I'm a bottomer myself."

Wilson felt a blush rise in his skull and a guffaw in his solar plexus trying to escape. He coughed to artificially calm both reactions. Not surprising, though, from House. Really, he should have expected it. And it made DeLouise squirm a little. High five House.

"Very amusing." DeLouise said while making it clear on his conservative face that he did not find it so. "Would you say you are in love with Doctor Wilson?

"I've always been in love with Doctor Wilson."

DeLouise's eyebrows jumped a notch.

So did Wilson's.

"Always?" DeLouise repeated. "I don't think I understand. Doctor Wilson indicated that you and he -"

"-I know what Doctor Wilson indicated."

"Then perhaps you can elaborate what you mean by "always"?"

"I mean always. Since practically the first day we met. I loved him right away and have ever since. Not sexually, of course, not at first. That's just a recent perk."

Wilson suddenly felt warm and weird all over.

"So you were in love, you say? You had feelings for him?"

"Of course. Don't you have feelings for the people you love? - though I doubt it goes both directions." House sighed. "Why does it have to be different? I loved Wilson right away. I just didn't want to sleep with him back then."

"Oh." DeLouise said, back on comfortable ground, "I think we see."

"I doubt it." House countered. "Why does throwing sex into the mix cause all you people to think that suddenly it makes love so much deeper?" House stared at the handle of his cane and looked over at Wilson. "Why can't it be that deep to begin with without the sex?"

DeLouise, "In a nutshell, you're saying you love Doctor Wilson as deeply now as you did when you first met him?"

"Yes."

"Why? What it is about Doctor Wilson that captured your heart so profoundly all those years ago? And might explain to us why you're so devoted to him now?"

For a reason he couldn't explain, Wilson felt like House was being lured into a trap, and even House, magnificent brain and all, momentarily clouded by his mind and feelings so focused on his friend and lover, didn't see it.

"He took to me." House said.

DeLouise snuffed. "So you measure his value, his love and friendship, highly because he - ahem! - recognized _you_ as a great prize?"

House fiddled with his cane and did what he usually did when it counted most, even if it might sting a little. He told the truth. "James Wilson is an anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive, emotionally repressed, sparkling clean, neat freak who irons his socks." House intoned matter-of-factly. He sounded like he was reading from a list tucked carefully on his lap. "He's a great cook but a C-plus oncologist at best. He's terrified of being alone, and runs away from the truth."

Wilson wondered if House was eventually going to get to his good points, assuming House thought he had any.

"But he's cared about me for eighteen years. Worried about me when I was about to screw up, and helped me when I did. Wilson's taken care of me at the worst times in my life, when _I_ didn't want to care anymore. And, in his misguided, overly-saccharine way, tried to help me become a better person."

House fired angry eyes at DeLouise who would dare to assume he understood a single thing that had ever transpired between he and Wilson. "So, to answer your ignorant question - no. I treasured his friendship because he thought of me as valuable even though I'm probably not."

House allowed himself a brief glance over to his lover, sitting in the benches, looking at him so pale, and so surprised and so endearingly _kind_. So openly vulnerable at that moment, he looked like he was about to become a river of tears and trickle down the wooden bench into a Wilson-shaped puddle. "He makes me feel good about myself. I have to believe it's because he sees something in me that others don't. That _I_ don't." A tiny smile tweaked one side of House's mouth. "I figure someone as idiotically optimistic as James Wilson falling in love with me? Somehow, I _must_ be worth the trouble."

"You love him a lot." DeLouise remarked. "Would you die for him?"

"Yep. Almost did."

That gave DeLouise a little pause, but he recovered quickly. "Could you live without him?"

"Sure." House said easily. "But I don't want to. I'm better off with him in my life. He, I,..." House shrugged his shoulders. "Wilson's the only person in my life I've ever really been afraid of losing. He's the best part."

"So you love him?"

House snapped. "Yes, you idiot - I love him! Happy now?"

Wilson was happy. House loved him. He knew it, of course, before today. Still, it was nice to hear it again.

"The question before us, Doctor House, is: would you kill to keep him?"

Wilson was instantly not happy anymore. He was furious and shaking and wanted to beat the living tar out of the smarmy, son-of-a-bitch.

-

-

-

Wilson didn't give House a minute to shed his jacket when the Hearing wrapped for the day. Even though there were two days, possibly three, left, he thrust it from his mind and captured House's mouth with his own in a hungry, urgent kiss. In between tongue-probing swallows of House's lips, Wilson mumbled sweet nothings into the rough skin of his jaw, in the soft, shallow caverns of his neck, against the delicate hill of his voice-box.

"I'm sorry you hate to hear it, but I love you. I love you so fucking much!" Wilson all but dragged House with him to the bedroom and, not letting him pause to properly shed the rest of his clothes, pushed him onto the bed, frantically removing his clothes for him with shaking fingers. He was hyper-aroused and wanted to drive his cock against House's flesh as soon as humanly possible.

Wilson fumbled with the zipper on House's infrequently worn gray suit, finally yanking the thing open with a small cry of need. "Get your shirt off." Wilson all but barked the order.

House, sat up and obeyed, watching Wilson's frantic, jerky movements at his own fly and tearing at his own buttons until he was naked. With amused astonishment, House lay back as Wilson pushed him down and all but dive bombed him with lips, hands and cock, jerking up and down on him like a socially awkward terrier.

His Wilson had turned into a tiger.

But just when it seemed like Wilson had forgot that House was there at all, he slowed and took House's head between his hands, kissing him deliberately, indulgently, like House was cake with cream-cheese icing and Wilson was tasting it for the first time.

Finally, Wilson let his mouth alone for a few seconds and stared into House's eyes until House squirmed a little beneath the out-of-character scrutiny. True, Wilson often stared at him. Sometimes with disappointment or anger, sometimes with sweet forgiveness or tolerant resignation. But this weird, unblinking gaze made him....uncomfortable, and a little afraid. There was almost too much unlabeled emotion wrapped up in those thoughtful, brown orbs. Wilson's passion for him, at that moment, seemed unhealthy. Abnormal.

But then, when had he ever attracted normal?

"Just when I think I've got you figured out, House, which - really - is rather _stupid_ of me; just when I think I've heard your final word on what you think about anything, or how you feel about life or love - or me! Just when I think I can't possibly be surprised anymore by the things you might do,..."

House listened, fascinated by this tiny, new side of Wilson - the bedroom chatty Wilson, who almost never talked when he was out for a hard, fast hump. House was as surprised by Wilson's verbosity as Wilson was by his uncharacteristic silence.

"Just when I think I at last know everything there is to know about you, you say things like you said in court today, and turn every goddamn perception I have of you inside-out." Wilson shook his head like he couldn't believe it. "You're a work of art, House. Your a Picasso, a Rembrandt and a Pollock all rolled into one. You're coarse and angry and weird and,..." Wilson frowned, suddenly saying sharply, "All I _have_ are words, House! Words and my lips and,...other parts." Then Wilson sighed heavily, kissing him very softly, "I can't fix your pain, I can't change your insanity - I don't want to fix you!"

It seemed like Wilson was sorting through some feelings, perhaps for the first time in a long while. "You're so scruffy and beautiful, and so fucking goddamn sexual, ...you drive me in every way mental to a degree, I, I..." He shook his head. "I can't even describe how nuts you make me sometimes."

Wilson rested his forehead on House's nude shoulder. He fit perfectly. Then turned his head and kissed the warm skin there. The taste on his lips was also perfect. "House, you're...." Wilson let out lung full of air, draining it from himself like liquid, as though he had been holding it in since the day they met. "...unbelievable."

Wilson lifted his head up again to stare into House's startled eyes with such intensity that House finally had to look away.

Wilson took a deep breath. "So . . ." House waited, his heart racing, a little worried over what the next words might be. At that point, with Wilson acting like a love-crazed stranger, he couldn't even guess what might come out of the man's mouth next.

Wilson growled. "So I am going to _fuck_ you so hard!"

And he did.

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Part IX asap


	9. Chapter 9

Fairy God Doctor

Part IX

By GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House attend a medical conference. One of them gets into some unexpected and serious trouble and the other must come to the rescue in an unexpected way.

Rating: ADULT. SLASH. NC-17, M. Mature.

Pairing: House/Wilson

Disclaimer: I don't own Gregory House, dang-nabit!

_**I have done some reading with Hearing and Court **__**proceedings**__**, but have taken some liberties with the way things might be done. Judge for yourselves. Any oddities are mine.**_

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"My name is Allison Cameron. I'm head of the Emergency Department at Princeton Plainsboro Hospital. I hold a specialty in Immunology."

Harcourt left the particulars about Doctor Cameron to focus on other things. "You worked with Doctor House for three years?"

"For almost four years. I did an internship under Doctor House to learn from him."

"So not only are you an Immunologist, you trained in Diagnostics with Doctor House for those four years?"

"That's correct."

Harcourt nodded, satisfied that he'd made his point to the judge. His witness was expert enough for it to lend weight to her statements. "You are aware of the unfounded insinuations against my client?"

DeLouise quickly stood. "Your Honor, I object to the term "unfounded". Whether or not the accusations against Doctor House are unfounded has not yet been determined by Your Honor; which is why we are here in your court of law."

Judge McKenzie nodded his agreement. "Sustained. Keep your own opinions to yourself, Mister Harcourt." But the judge addressed DeLouise as well. "This court belongs to the _county_, Mister DeLouise. Brown-nosing will get you nowhere." Nodding to the defense, "Please continue Mister Harcourt."

"Certainly." He continued, pleased with DeLouise's dressing down.

"You are aware, Doctor Cameron, of the accusations against my client?"

"Yes, and they're ridiculous."

"Why do you say so?" Harcourt liked her spunk.

"Several reasons; least of which is - Doctor House is not a violent man."

"May the court hear your other thoughts on the matter as well, after which we can go into more detail on your personal knowledge about your distinguished teacher, Doctor House."

"First of all, there are dozens of possible causes for a rash to appear on the body of a man who is not only fevered but being dosed with broad spectrum antibiotics and anticoagulants-"

"-Anti-coagulants? Blood thinners?" Harcourt asked.

"Yes. Anti-coagulants can cause petecchia, tiny hemorrhages beneath the skin which could be mistaken for a rash. As for the diagnosis behind the rash, Red Person Syndrome is the first and most likely that comes to my mind."

"Can you enlighten the court in more detail please, about this Red Person Syndrome?"

"It is an infusion-related immunological hypersensitivity that occurs in a patient not previously known as allergic. It is most often associated with vancomycin, a strong anti-biotic designed to treat infection."

"I'd like to remind the court that Doctor Morgan was on a repeating dose of vancomycin as an infection preventative. As an expert witness, you have read the autopsy report on Doctor Morgan. Was he allergic?"

"No." Cameron continued. "But that makes no difference. The rash arises due to the release of histamine in the body, that is - the bodies attempt to rid itself of what it sees as a foreign substance. Every body produces histamine as part of immunity defense against infection."

"That's why my nose gets stuffy and runs when I have a cold. Is that right?"

"A common and harmless example, but yes. Red Person Syndrome is far more serious, but it still difficult to recognize at first. It can be mistaken for other things. A fever rash for instance."

"And Morgan had a fever, yes?"

"Yes."

"Would you say that the report of the appearance of Doctor Morgan's rash just prior to his death was abnormal? Contraindicative of a typical bout of Red Person Syndrome? In other words, would Red Person Syndrome be _unlikely_ with such a case, even in someone with no prior allergy?"

"Absolutely not. Doctor Morgan had been on antibiotics for several days and Red Person Syndrome is peculiar to vancomycin, often arbitrarily. The syndrome can appear minutes after an infusion is started or might begin soon after its completion. There have been documented reactions occurring several days after a _second_ infusion without any warning or prior incident."

"Can this anti-biotic cause any other adverse reactions in a patient?"

"Yes. Severe anaphylaxis."

"Excuse me, would you explain..?"

"Vasodilation, the blood vessels expand, the blood pressure drops, histamine is released is massive quantities and can lead to edema and bronchioconstriction. Again - difficulty breathing. Less frequently, angioedema can occur; that's inflammation of the heart vessels. The patient becomes dizzy and agitated, their heart rate can sky-rocket or drop dangerously low. They can develop headaches, chills, or fever."

"That's quite a list. Some of which could be mistaken for a heart attack?"

"Certainly, yes."

"What other substances injected into, say, an IV line a vein or even intramuscularly, might cause such a rash?"

"There are many. Some are cytotoxic or cytolytic; they kill or break down red blood cells-"

"-Which could mimic a rash."

"Yes. Some are cell mediated. In other words, contact reactions, causing skin irritation."

"The prosecutions contention, Doctor Cameron, is to prove by imaginative mechanisms unknown to me, that Doctor House, _somehow_, induced the death of Doctor Morgan by administering, by _some unknown route_, an _unknown, _and as yet_ un-named_," Harcourt looked pointedly at DeLouise, "drug that caused Doctor Morgan's heart to stop."

"I find that unlikely in the extreme. Doctor House is not a violent man. I've never seen him hurt anything. He kept a rat as a _pet_ instead of having it exterminated."

"Doctor Cameron, . ."

Harcourt addressed the more sympathetic faces in the room, the inflection in his voice a perfect mix of outrage and scandalous incredulity. It said that DeLouise and the money hungry family paying his salary were out for revenge or money or _both_, and that they had chosen Doctor House as the easiest target to get what they wanted. That they were, in fact, out for blood.

" . . .in your professional opinion, as a trained Diagnostician and Immunologist, is it more likely that this rash was a simple reaction to drugs already being administered by his attendings to Doctor Morgan, and not some mysterious substance rendered to him by Doctor House, who was only there to check on the progress of his colleague - admittedly not a visit perhaps performed as wisely as he might have done - and was simply a man unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?"

Harcourt finished his detailed, elaborately phrased question and waited for Doctor Cameron's practiced response.

"I think the notion is absurd." For the first time since her questioning began, Cameron looked over at House. He looked older. He looked tired. But everything else about him was exactly as she remembered as though it were her very first day in his employ. He had the same shockingly blue eyes. He was still intense and brilliant, aloof and humorous, sarcastic and - hardly ever but just sometimes - even sweet. She was glad he was still the man she had grown to respect and eventually love.

She was also glad that he was partnered with Wilson. For years they had fought like a couple, it only made sense they'd end up being one.

Add to that - she still loved House. Just in a better way. "Doctor House is a gentle man. He may not often take to people, but I consider him a close friend."

Harcourt nodded, smiled kindly and thanked her.

"Your witness." McKenzie said to DeLouise.

-

-

The lawyer DeLouise smiled his most pleasant smile and addressed Cameron while, using one elbow, leaning comfortably on the witness stand. "Doctor House is _non-violent_? That was your testimony. Doctor House is a gentle, kind man who would not hurt a fly. He was, in fact, a good boss, great doctor and all around congenial, fun-loving, good-to-his-mother guy?"

"I did _not_ say-"

"-_Gentle_." DeLouise repeated, more loudly, looking around at the court as though he knew no one else believed it either. "A man given to fits of rage. A man who is a documented drug user and abuser; an alcoholic; a man who assaulted a police officer," DeLouise rubbed his forehead as though the vision of it was difficult to comprehend, "with a _thermometer. _

"A physician, sworn to do no harm, who, on two different occasions, assaulted a patient or family member of that patient. A man who's judgment of medically acceptable treatment is so skewed, he approved, and," DeLouise looked at the judge, "I have the legally documented records right here Your Honor." DeLouise said.

"A physician so skewed in his medical judgment that he ordered the following tests, and it's quite a list too, at one time or another to be conducted: an ECG performed on a boy with ninety percent second and third degree burns to his body, using a Wenckebach device - that's a turn of the century machine that records heart-rate and rhythm by the use of copper electrodes and buckets of water into which the patients hand and feet are placed."

DeLouise spun on Cameron. "You _don't_ think using electricity on a burn victim is a trifle reckless, considering the risk of further infection or - let me just put this out there - possible _electrocution_!?"

DeLouise did not wait for her answer but again read from the document in question. "Doctor House deemed it necessary to wake this boy up from his morphine induced sleep, subjecting him to several minutes of extreme agony whereby he screamed, in order to ask him one question." DeLouise turned to the audience. "That was in the disciplinary notes of the boy's Clean Room attendant."

Cameron knew it would be too difficult to explain to a room full of laymen that it had been one of few last options, apart from the other risky things House had done that day to try and diagnose his patient. She also decided not to mention that House had injected himself with nitroglycerin to bring on a massive migraine, followed by an illegal migraine counter-active followed by dropping acid in the shower while their patient got worse, all to prove a point to another physician who had absolutely nothing to do with the case, and with whom House held a very old and bitter dispute, in order to _ruin_ him.

Sometimes House was a little crazy. But he was also so often right, too. House had prooved the migraine counter-agent was useless.

"Does it also mention there that Doctor House diagnosed the patient, rendered treatment and _saved his life_?"

DeLouise ignored her comment and plunged ahead. "Doctor House once transfused himself with possibly tainted and lethal blood to test a theory. Is that correct?"

Cameron knew where this was obviously going. Make House look like a raving lunatic with a medical license let loose on society's unsuspecting public. Much of that was, unfortunately, true. Cuddy protected House from the repercussions of his own medically and behaviorally questionable actions like a parent would protect a wayward teenager. It was bizarre. It was impossible to explain to DeLouise or any of them that House, despite all his insanity, was the finest physician she had ever known who saved almost everyone ever sent to him.

"Doctor House has a fail rate near zero." Cameron insisted. "His cases are almost always unusual - medical mysteries - sent to him because no one else was able to help. I admit that his methods are somewhat..._unorthodox,_ but you can't argue with the results."

"The ends justifies the means, in other words?"

"Stop putting words in my mou-"

"Unorthodox?" DeLouise continued reading from his wad of documents. "And as for being a last chance hero," DeLouise read again. "An AIDS victim's father was assaulted by Doctor House-"

"The father hit him first!"

"Tit for tat, eh?"

DeLouise was quick to dismiss anything with a plausible explanation, allowing Cameron no chance to interject and explain the extenuating circumstances. DeLouise completely ignored the part where the father did not press charges because not only had he admitted to hitting Doctor House first, House had saved his son's life and his own.

It was too much to explain. There were too many things that, on the surface, appeared crazy, but underneath showed reasonable cause. "That kid wanted to die. Doctor House saved his life - and the father's!"

Cameron wondered why Harcourt sat there, silently letting DeLouise publically tear his client apart. Why the hell doesn't that lawyer _do_ something??

DeLouise ignored her, waving the papers around like a flag. "House has stolen prescription narcotics for his own indulgence from another doctor's _dead_ patient. He has repeatedly refused to enter Rehab programs to deal with his addictions. He has ignored hospital safety protocols and medical common sense to "save a life", which I think is a laughable translation of: "play his pet diagnostic games". House has even, and I quote from Plainsboro's Dean of Medicine's notes: "_during a bout of severe depression, stuck a knife in a wall socket_."

DeLouise looked around the court room with his face a mask of utter disbelief. "Does any of this sound to you like the reasonable actions of a level-headed doctor with no intent to harm anyone or himself?" He turned to Cameron. "Well, forgive me for being doubtful of the motives underlying the behavior of the great Gregory House, but it sounds to me like the actions of a lunatic with absolutely no regard for anyone - not even _himself_."

DeLouise dropped the papers on his prosecutor's desk with a dramatic bang. "I could go on, Your Honor, there is lots more, but I think I've made my point."

McKenzie was careful not to personally comment on the drama they had all just witnessed, but only said "Indeed you have."

Cameron looked over at Harcourt. He seemed like a man drowning. Beside him House sat, his hands resting on the curve of his cane, his eyes on the table in front of him. It was impossible to read his expression.

DeLouise took a deep breath as though the pursual of House's practice history had exhausted him. "Your Honor. The family of Doctor Terrance Morgan want justice. They want to know why their father - _Missus_ Morgan wants to know why her husband of twenty-three years is dead. Doctor House, according to sworn testimony, was the last person in the room with him; the last person to see Morgan alive and the only person with an invested interest - a personal invested interest - in seeing Morgan dead.

Cameron's eyes switched to Wilson, pale and sickly. He clearly believed House was going to go down, somehow.

"I believe it is vital to examine the behavior and therefor the motives behind Doctor House's visit to Morgan that day - according to testimony, a man he hardly knew - that is: was his visit for an innocent reason or not? And, moreover, _what_ possible reason would Doctor House have had in visiting this patient - and not _his_ patient as has been made clear? Certainly not treatment. Not diagnosis; Morgan's diagnosis was still under investigation by the attending staff..."

Cameron knew that was a twisting of the truth. The attendings _had_ accepted House's contention of possibly necrotic duodenal scar tissue causing dyspnea and other confusing and dangerous symptoms, at least having accepted it to the point where they were considering an exploratory.

Only Morgan had died before they got the chance. And so the autopsy; a much delayed autopsy had confirmed the scar tissue. Though it didn't explain why Morgan had succumbed. Cameron found herself suddenly in possession of a terrible headache.

DeLouise was talking. "Your Honor. I _question_ Doctor House's medical judgment. I _question _his dedication to human life. I _question_ his very oath as a physician to do no harm. I question his very _mind_, Your Honor. Even a cursory examination of this man's medical practices, his own medical history containing documented histrionic behavior, narcissism, disregard for social norms, his regular disdain and disrespect toward his colleagues, should make it clear: whatever reason he might argue as a valid for his visit to Doctor Morgan that day would be, really, laughable. I think none of us believe, having learned what we have learned today regarding Doctor House's unjustifiably ill-conceived medical practices, that it was out of concern for a colleague. Certainly not human empathy. Perhaps not even curiosity about the case.

"So the question for the good citizen's of this Hearing is: _Why_? _Why _go there at all? _Why _visit this dying man - a fellow physician, true - but otherwise a stranger?" DeLouise turned and looked directly at House -

"_Why_, Doctor House?"

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Part X asap


	10. Chapter 10

Fairy God Doctor

Part IX

By GeeLady

Summary: Wilson and House attend a medical conference. One of them gets into some unexpected and serious trouble and the other must come to the rescue in an unexpected way.

Rating: ADULT. SLASH. NC-17, M. Mature.

Pairing: House/Wilson

Disclaimer: I don't own Gregory House, dang-nabit!

_**I have done some reading with Hearing and Court **__**proceedings**__**, but have taken some liberties with the way things might be done. Judge for yourselves. Any oddities are mine.**_

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"Why _did_ you go there?"

House shed his suit jacket, tossing it over a chair, thankful to be free of some of the stuffy, court-required attire. He looked at Wilson as though to a pesky insect that kept coming back to buzz around his head. "Are you kidding me?"

Wilson followed House's angry dot-and-one-go down the hall into the bedroom. "House. I don't think you killed the guy, I just want to know why you went there. Was it really just to talk to him?"

Wilson followed House to the closet where House yanked off his tie and tossed it on the dresser instead of hanging it up. Wilson picked it up and without conscious thought, hung it over a clothes hanger. "Or was it maybe to scare him? Perchance threaten him into telling his devoted family to back off?"

House didn't answer, only plunked down on the edge of the bed and began removing his thick soled sneakers.

Wilson watched patiently. At least this pair was black. "Or was it maybe to frighten him so he would eat himself to death?"

House stood to unzip his fly. "Eat this!" He sat down again, slipping his pants off, pausing a moment to knead his thigh. Wilson, his own unspoken rule, suspended his interrogation while House brought his pain under some control. He sat down beside him.

"House-"

House shook his head. "I am not having this conversation with you again. If you want to think what that idiot DeLouise wants everyone to think, then think it. I'm sick of this. Go away now. I still want to like you tomorrow."

Wilson felt guilty for asking but felt that House was not being forthcoming about everything. "I just,..." He sighed, tired of the whole shitload himself. "I just need to know that...everything's okay. That I'm not going to wake up tomorrow or next week and find myself sleeping with a stranger."

House glared at him sharply as though stung. "You think, this," He gestured between Wilson and the bed and himself. "this thing between you and me is _fake_? You think I'm _pretending_?"

Wilson had hit a raw nerve and knew that of course House would not fake love. The man could lie to the devil and get away with it, but he could never lie about affection. He would never pretend to be in love with anyone he liked. The genuine article was the one thing in life House still held as sacred.

"Of course I don't think that." Wilson put his face as close to House's as he dared without touching, so House would feel his body heat. As close as they had been physically - Wilson had seen House in all manner of nudity - leaning in close, invading his personal space was still his best weapon for gleaning the truth from the man. It was the one sure way to get at House's deepest feelings on a matter. "I don't want to lose you. If there's something you're not telling me, something that could, I don't know, jeopardize the outcome of this Hearing; something that could put you in a bad light-"

"-_Jesus,_ Wilson, there hasn't been a _good_ one yet."

House stripped off his socks, keeping his eyes averted but Wilson could feel his lover's walls slowly crumbling. "You know what I mean."

House nodded. "Yeah, I know." He tossed the balled up socks into the corner of the bedroom, missing the clothes-hamper. Wilson had purchased one a week after moving in. He shook his head and let slip with one of his tiny, ironic chuckles; barely a breath of wind from between grim lips. "You and that word; you and _Love_. You say it so often..."

Wilson sensed he was about to lose his shaky control on the conversation. "This isn't about-"

"-Sure it is. It's always about that." House looked at him sadly. "You don't trust me."

Wilson felt his heart lurch. It wasn't true. It wasn't _mostly_ true. "Yes I do."

House shook his head and sighed, evidently exhausted with the whole useless parlay. "If you did, you would have never asked me to begin with. You would know."

Wilson felt like a heel but, still... "House,..."

House leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his head hanging almost parallel with the floor, as though there was far too much on his shoulders and he was close to snapping in half. "You want to know: Am I capable of murder?" He nodded. "Sure. Would I _want_ to kill someone without a damn good and sufficient reason? _No_. But you think I might. And because I'm already an addict and drunk, then why not a selfish bastard who doesn't value human life?"

"Don't play the sympathy card."

House stared at him. "You want to hear this? It's what you've been digging for all evening."

Wilson shut up and crossed his arms, leaning away to listen, surrendering the floor to House.

House took that as a yes. "You're right. I _am_ an addict and a drunk. I'm a self-centered SOB, too. You've not only thought it, you've said it."

Wilson did not feel like arguing a point he could not by any rights deny.

"You think like these other idiots think, only you add "probably not" at the end."

Wilson rubbed his eyes with a finger and thumb, understanding that he should have let it drop. He had asked for House's true feelings and now he was getting them, and they left him feeling sick at heart for their stark honesty, and himself guilty for having doubted him.

House was a maze of discovery. Even when the man was being honest, loving him, though always difficult, was startling. At the moment, House's defensive, personal shields were as tissue paper, and Wilson saw that House was waiting for his next move to see if it would tear through him or not.

But Wilson remained silent.

House paused to catch his breath.

House was scared. His face was white. And Wilson needed to halt his lover's rapidly accelerating fear that not even Wilson believed him. No one, it seemed, was all the way over in his corner. Even Wilson had one foot still in the ring and it was obvious that it hurt.

"You think a lot of things I guess." House added. "But what I need is for you to _believe _that I didn't hurt Morgan." House looked at him and Wilson saw the raw reaching-for-hope in his eyes and his heart almost stopped. House's walls were down.

That is all he had wanted; someone all the way in his corner. Wilson found himself wondering how often that had actually occurred in House's life. He said quietly. "I don't think you killed Morgan, House." _The sweet words said to my lover as he __teetered__ on the edge of worth, and I just pull him back. _Wilson felt like a traitorous shit.

House looked at the carpet, nodded and sighed, as though he had been holding his breath this whole time; as if his world had almost come crashing down around him. Quietly relieved, "Thank you."

House looked over at him, his eyes piercing the thick air. True-blue glowing luminescent holes from his soul. "_Now_ I'll tell you why I went to see Morgan."

-

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"I'd like to call Doctor Gregory House to the stand." Harcourt addressed the room of judge, lawyers and lookers-on.

House reluctantly took his place in the witness box, gingerly easing himself down onto the hard, wooden seat, leaning his cane against the barrier.

Harcourt began by a gentle coaxing of his client into the den of wolves. "You are a physician at New Jersey Plainsboro Hospital?"

"Yes."

"And, for the record, what post do you hold there?"

"I'm the head of the Department of Diagnostics. I instruct three fellowships - interns."

"And you've been a practicing physician for how long?"

"In various positions, twenty-six years."

"You carry what specialties?"

DeLouise stood. "Your Honor, we can stipulate through all this."

Harcourt countered. "It is within protocol to have this stated in its entirety for the record, Your Honor."

McKenzie waved DeLouise back to his seat. "Continue Doctor House."

"I hold two specialties in Infectious Disease and Nephrology."

"Kidney functions?"

"And diseases, yes."

Harcourt nodded, very casually strolling around in a small circle before the court. "Doctor House. Are you a jerk?"

Unexpected question. Harcourt had obviously been talking to Wilson.

"Takes one to know one."

Harcourt smiled patiently at him. "Do you use pain drugs, a lot of pain drugs and take a drink or two? Or three?"

"Yes to all of the above."

"Do you take risks with your patients lives?"

"I am sometimes forced to take risks with the _treatments_ to hopefully save their lives."

"And with a near one hundred percent save rate, isn't that so, you jerk?" By saying it, by putting the word out there, Harcourt was draining it of its potency. That House may or may not be a jerk, or have a temper, or drink or use drugs, was only the opinion of some. And _only_ opinion. It was even the opinion of his lover who yet _loved_ him. Harcourt was demonstrating to the court that private or public perception of Doctor House's personality was essentially irrelevant. Being an addict or a drunk or even a jerk did not make one a bad doctor or a liar. Or a murderer.

Wilson silently applauded the lawyer.

House frowned. He didn't like being in the dark, and later was going to have a talk about it with Wilson. "Yes to the first thing. And I may be a jerk, but you're a _lawyer_." This solicited some chuckles around the room.

Harcourt chuckled indulgently too, enjoying himself. "Why did Doctor Cuddy offer you a position?"

House started a little. They had not practiced this line of questioning in Harcourt's office either. It was pissing him off. "Because . . .she opened a new department. I fit the bill." _I got you cheap._

"Why?" Harcourt asked with deep interest. "According to Mister DeLouise and the free world, you're impossible to get along with. You drink and take drugs and, among your colleagues, possess an infamous temper. Why in the world would Doctor Cuddy, Dean of Medicine at the most prestigious teaching hospital in the whole blinking state, offer _you_ a job? And not just a job, but your own _Department_?"

House had no idea where this was going but as far as he was concerned, it was nobody's damn business. Peeved, "What does it matter?"

Harcourt nodded, seemingly expecting just that response. He walked to his defense table and withdrew a hand-written statement, bringing it to Judge McKenzie to examine.

The judge looked at it, nodded and handed it back.

Holding it up for the court. "Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen." Harcourt began, "this is a written testimony by Doctor Cuddy, Dean of Medicine at Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, the facility in remarks. Doctor Lisa Cuddy is Doctor House's boss and she was good enough to provide a sworn written statement addressing the question Doctor House has just declined to answer. I'd like it to be entered into the record."

Harcourt looked with sympathy at House. "Doctor House, you are a private man and I respect that, but I feel it is necessary for His Honor and the rest of this distinguished court here today, to know the answer."

Seething, House said nothing, only flashed dagger eyes at Wilson and then back to his lawyer.

When Harcourt received no further protest, he read:

_"In 1999, Doctor House lost the complete use of his right leg due to a __misdiagnoses__ on the part of our Emergency Department. Due to this, he suffered greatly and has suffered ever since with loss of his mobility and from the resulting chronic pain with which he must battle daily. Despite all that he endured, Doctor House made no legal or private motion for compensation. Indeed, substantial compensation was offered by this hospital to __Doctor__ House, which he once again refused. After a series of very difficult adjustments in his professional life, a year later, I sought out Doctor House and again offered him a job, this time as Department Head of Diagnostics. I felt his abilities as, not only a brilliant infectious and __nephrological__ specialist, but as an uncanny medical man with particular insights into the field of diagnostics, would make him a highly valuable addition to my staff. Indeed, I insisted he accept the position. He agreed on one condition: that I never again offer compensation. Although at the time he did not explain to me why, I now believe it was because he wanted to practice his chosen profession on his own merit and abilities, and not as a result of the collective guilt on the part of the hospital's board members, or misplaced sympathy on the part of the staff; __foremost__ - this writer. In this decision, the bringing of Doctor House onto my roster, I have no regrets what-so-ever. He has served this hospital and his profession with an excellence and dedication I have seldom seen matched by any, and it is my honor to provide this character missive on his behalf."_

Harcourt looked over at Doctor House. "It is signed _"Doctor Lisa Cuddy"._

Had it been a movie theater, Wilson believed there would have a wiping of a tear or two among the audience. Cuddy was going to get a thousand dollar gift certificate to Bloomington's in her next Christmas card.

Harcourt placed the document among with the other items on the evidence table. "I think the question of whether Doctor House is a sufficiently talented and dedicated physician has been well answered."

Harcourt addressed House directly. "The other question that my colleague has raised, Doctor House, is why you went to see Doctor Morgan that day, so I'd like to get that out of the way as well. I'd like to once and for all _settle_ this second distracting little question that is hampering our advancment to the evidence - or lack-there-of - regarding these erroneous accusations against you."

Harcourt looked straight at him. "Tell us, then: Why did you go to see Doctor Morgan that day?"

House cleared his throat. He looked uncomfortable. "I went to offer him money if he would tell his family to back off. I wanted him to leave Wilson alone."

"A bribe? You went there to help Doctor Wilson? You wanted to protect the man you live with. Because you are in love with him?"

House glared at his lawyer. "Duh."

Harcourt nodded. "Even so, not the wisest thing you've ever done."

House shrugged. "No, but I didn't think I had any choice. In my opinion the Morgan's wanted to ruin a man, a good man, who saved their father's life, because they had their eyes on half a million more in settlement. It was a gross lack of appreciation for what Doctor Wilson did." House looked down at his cane. "When a physician or nurse takes it upon him or herself to help someone while off duty, they take a big risk. Samaritan's law aside, anything can happen. They might save a life, they might not, but whatever the outcome, it gives the grieving survivors somewhere to point a finger if they think they somehow got a raw deal - even if they didn't.

"People who are grieving want the pain to stop. They can't attack the dead and a nurse's wage won't get them much. But if they can force a hospital or a doctor or an insurance company to cough up, I imagine it goes a long way toward easing the pain."

DeLouise stood. "Your Honor, this is an outrage. The witness is mocking the Morgan family's grief."

McKenzie waved his hand. "Doctor House may have a blunt way of putting things, Mister DeLouise, but you know what he has said is, in general, often the case. My court wouldn't be as crowded if it were not."

House took that as leave to continue. "Doctor Wilson wanted to, in his misguided idiotic neighborliness, help a man he thought might die. Turns out, being neighborly was a mistake. Wilson was going to be ruined. Seeing Morgan out of professional curiosity over his case was just an excuse. I went to see Morgan to offer a bribe. Doctor Wilson's practice is worth saving."

Wilson felt warm all over. It was House's way of saying _he_ was worth saving.

Harcourt folded his hands on the witness stand. "Doctor House, when you arrived at Doctor Morgan's room, was he awake?"

"No, he was asleep."

"Tell us what else you observed while you in Doctor Morgan's hospital room."

"He was breathing even and steady. He seemed in no distress." House looked over at DeLouise. "And there was no rash on his chest."

Even DeLouise started at that revelation and he stood. "I have the disciplinary records of the attending physician at the time, Your Honor, and the nurses notes. There was a rash."

"I've read the notes. There probably was a rash, simply not yet evident while I was there."

Harcourt raised his eyebrows and looked around the court room, challenging anyone to doubt the validity of his clients words _now_. "No rash?" Harcourt took a deep breath. "Seems the evidence, and I use the term loosely, with which my client has been accused, wasn't actually present at the scene of the crime."

DeLouise said. "Objection."

McKenzie frowned. "What are you objecting to?"

"We have only just begun to examine what evidence there is. It remains to be seen whether it was present or not."

McKenzie looked like he had just eaten a fly. "Well, if you'll stop interrupting, we can get on with examining this "evidence", which has yet to be presented to me."

In answer to Harcourt's last question, House said. "I also think, in the case of Doctor Morgan, that Doctor Cameron's suggested diagnosis of Red Person Syndrome is a bit of a stretch. It's not all that hard to recognize, nor is it all that common."

Wilson was glad Cameron could not be in court that day.

Harcourt, hands in his pockets, walked toward his client, his face a terrific imitation of puzzlement. "I don't understand, Doctor House. Then what caused the rash? And when did it appear?"

"Doctor Cameron was correct. Lots of things found in a hospital can cause skin reactions - antibiotics, laxitives, aspirin, drug dyes, epipens - that's adrenaline - and even big-guy nappies. But if you ask me what I think caused it?" House spoke to Harcourt though nodding toward DeLouise. "Tell DeLouise to read from the nurses disciplinary notes. Ask him to find the last treatment administered to Doctor Morgan prior to death."

DeLouise stared at Harcourt. "He's not _my _client."

Harcourt, with eyebrows raised in questioning arcs, found the information himself from his own notes. "Shall I, Your Honor?"

McKenzie nodded to DeLouise instead. "Proceed."

DeLouise obeyed, placed his reading glasses on his nose, and flipped through the many documents at hand and located the relevant material. Not without perturbance, he read aloud: "Patient shaved. Prep' for Radiology." DeLouise looked at the time it was done. "This was performed at approximately fifteen-thirty hours." He shrugged his shoulders. "So what?"

House looked at his hands resting comfortably on the handle of his favorite cane. "What was the time recorded for my visit?"

DeLouise read: "Fifteen-forty-five."

"When I found Morgan asleep, there was nothing for me to do. Can't bribe a sleeping patient. So I stayed for a couple of minutes and left."

DeLouise sighed. "So you claim. Again, So what?"

"Folliculitis. Simplest explanation." House said.

"And what's Follicu-"

"Skin irritation." House answered. "From _shaving_. Bacteria gets into microscopic cuts in the skin, becomes purulent - this can happen in minutes." House stretched out his hand, pointing at DeLouise's left index finger. It sported a small bandage. "Paper cut?"

DeLouise looked at his finger. "Preparing for this case. Last night."

"How long before the edges of the skin turned red?"

DeLouise shrugged. "I didn't wash it immediately, but I suppose, minutes. Six, seven minutes."

"That raised, reddish swelling along the edges of the cut? That's bacteria, already making it's home inside the wound. Our bodies carry thousands - millions of bacteria of all kinds."

DeLouise laughed a little. "Are you trying to assert, Doctor House, that Doctor Morgan's mysterious rash was because he cut himself shaving?"

"No, the nurse cut him while shaving him. Micro-cuts. Dozens of tiny, open wounds for the bacteria on his skin."

"But the nurse would have-"

"-Sterilized the area, yes. But just with alcohol. The surgical sepsis would have been done in the operating room and with far stronger antiseptics. Morgan wasn't due for surgery until after the CT that, once I gave him my opinion, his attending finally ordered. The nurse was just being efficient. She shaved her patient before he was due to be transported out of the Unit. She did her job."

"This is ridiculous." DeLouise said. "Your honor, we cannot take this man's words as anything but an attempt to deflect."

"Doctor House took an oath in this court, Mister DeLouise."

"So that makes him incapable of lying?"

McKenzie leaned forward and said in a voice that warned DeLouise not to argue further. "As a lawyer, you took an oath to uphold the law. Shall we next discuss _that_? And let me remind you, Mister DeLouise, that you are not a physician, so I'm going to let Doctor House finish, if that's okay with _you."_

"Of course, Your Honor." DeLouise retired to his seat, sufficiently abashed.

"Doctor Morgan died from just what I suspected." House began again. "He had undergone a stomach stapling years before to lose weight. But he abused his body post-surgery with high fat foods and alcohol, regaining the weight he had lost. Surgical scar tissue on his duodenum eventually began pressing against his diaphragm causing dyspnea, which caused him to inspire food into his throat. Doctor Wilson's quick actions dislodged the bolus, but Morgan continued to have breathing difficulty. The emergency attending suspected a ruptured diaphragm and possible bleeding into his abdominal cavity with the risk on infection that would naturally cause." House tapped his cane on the floor. Wilson recognized it as a thing House did when, whatever the argument, that he knew he was winning.

"Anticoagulants were administered which cause Morgan to stroke. Thrombolytic thinners were then given but it was already too late. Morgan never recovered from that stroke. My diagnosis of the duodenum scar tissue was only investigated weeks post-mortem."

Harcourt, himself impressed, asked. "And what were the findings of the medical examiner, Doctor House?"

"Scar tissue on the duodenum. No signs of infection." House sighed. He was tired. "The Morgans lose out on a cool extra half million. Their dad did himself in by gluttony."

Harcourt stared at his client, hardly believing the man himself. So you were willing to bribe Morgan, go through this Hearing, risk your reputation, all to save your friend sitting right over there."

House looked like he wanted to shrink into the wood splinters. He nodded. "Yes." He looked at Wilson once then away, embarrassed by his own vulnerability where Wilson was concerned. "I'd do anything for him."

Harcourt paused dramatically and then, in a booming voice that would brook no further argument, looked at Judge McKenzie and said with triumph, "In the lack of any substantiative evidence that my client did anything harmful at all to Doctor Morgan, other than offer a plausible diagnosis for his illness - that his own attending at first ignored," Harcourt said the last bit directly to DeLouise. "I ask for an immediate dismissal of this Hearing." He returned to his seat, plump with victory. Harcourt said as a final call of the battle won - "A skin rash as a result of a close shave is hardly "evidence". Reasonable doubt, Your Honor."

McKenzie nodded. "Quite reasonable. Mister Harcourt." McKenzie looked at DeLouise. "Your witness?"

DeLouise looked at House with resentful though, now, more respectful eyes. "No questions."

"Closing statement?"

DeLouise remained seated. "No closing, Your Honor."

"And you, mister Harcourt?"

"None, Your Honor."

"Very well. Then I shall make mine. This Hearing seemed to me to be more about conjecture and opinion than it did about facts and concrete evidence. In fact, I could see no evidence forthcoming, Mister DeLouise. The reputation of two of this state's dedicated physicians have been sullied. You might thank whatever god your worship that neither of these gentelman have filed a countersuit for slander. But the defense in this case has filed a motion for all disbursements to the courts, etc, be paid by the late Doctor Morgan's family and their attorney. I'm sure they will want a few words with you, Mister DeLouise.

"Let me also state that Mister DeLouise and his clients have tied up this court's time and the public's tax money with baseless accusations, and as much as I'd like to see some compensation for that be returned to the people of New Jersey, well, this is precisely why this state has arranged for Hearings; to examine whether sufficient evidence exists to take a dispute such as this one to trial, and so eat up more of the state's funds. In this instance, I find no substantial evidence exists and therefor I am not going to allow this to go to trial. This case is dismissed."

-

-

-

-

Wilson took House out to a victory dinner and stuffed him full of steak and salad, then got himself drunk.

"You surprise even me." Wilson said after his fourth beer. "Hey. How much were you going to bribe Morgan with anyway?"

House chewed a french fry. "Six hundred, fifty-five thousand dollars."

Wilson almost choked on his swallow of beer. "W-what? Six hundred, fifty-five thousand bucks?"

House tried to wave the numbers away. "Don't be too flattered, twenty thousand of that was yours."

Wilson refused to let it go. "House. Six hundred thousand...I think I love you."

House frowned for real. "Don't start, Pickleuppigus. Let's go home."

-

-

-

Wilson preceded House in the door and once the door was shut he pushed House up against the wall. "I'm not sure if he going to work, but I'm sure as hell going to try, sexy."

House rolled his eyes. "Mind if I take off my shoes? And you need a mouthwash, you smell like a day-old ashtray into which someone poured beer."

Wilson just giggled and kissed House and House let him. Wilson reluctantly let House's lips go but looked at him, right in the eye. "Where in the world would you have gotten six hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars? I know you don't have that much money. Unless one of my bank accounts has gone missing."

House stared back, sober as a priest on Sunday. "I would have sold everything."

Wilson gaped, his heart speeding up for this man he was going to bang the lights out of a moment from now. "Sold eve-, . .sold what?"

House nodded his head to his apartment. "You know, the piano, the guitars, the record collection, the corvette; cash in my bonds; retirement fund; savings - everything."

Wilson went still. His breath washed against his lover's face. "I know you hate the word and I don't care. I've never loved anyone like I love you. I'm not sure it's even possible." He kissed him.

House drew away from the kiss. "You stink. Go shower."

Wilson laughed and stumbled down the hall, removing his tie. "A man of wit and charm." Wilson called back over his shoulder, "Do you have any beer?"

"No."

"Can you go get some?"

House thought it was a good idea. "I'll have to take your car. Mine's in the shop."

"Don't scratch the paint."

"Yes, dad."

House drove to a nearby liquor store and bought a dozen medium priced beer. He didn't have any six hundred, fifty-five grand on him at the moment. Eighteen bucks would have to do. Had he needed to, though, he would have bought Wilson's way out of that mess somehow.

Didn't matter now. He loved him. More than anything in the world. Wilson was safe now. Wilson was all he had. He would have done everything to help him. Anything to save him. . .

House stopped in a nearby park through which ran a rapidly gurgling creek, carrying leaves, sticks and human fast-food refuse down to Lake Carnegie. From his pocket he pulled out a small thing. So small a thing. House knew it well. He was a doctor after all. He could quote most of the pharmacology by heart.

_**Epinephrine **__is a sympathomimetic __catecholamine__. Chemically, epinephrine is B-(3, 4­dihydroxyphenyl)-a-methyl-aminoethanol._ _Epinephrine is a heart stimulant. __**Contraindications **__are: __hypertensive patients or those with other cardiovascular disease or patients taking other drugs that affect vasodilation or constriction, or drugs that affect sympathetic nervous system function are at higher risk than patients without these conditions. Systemically absorbed epinephrine, by venous, intramuscular or high topical concentrations could also increase heart rate and exacerbate cardiac rhythm disturbances or myocardial ischemia. Rash may develop with topical application. __Epinephrine solution deteriorates rapidly on exposure to air or light, turning pink from oxidation to adrenochrome and brown from the formation of __melanin__. _

House tossed the empty topical vial into the polluted stream and watched it float away.

. . .Anything at all.

XXX END

Thanks for reading.


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